


Shadow People

by FireFleshAndBlood



Category: Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Creepy, Extremely Dubious Consent, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Medical Procedures, Menstruation, Minor Character Death, Mount Massive Asylum, Mpreg, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Physical Abuse, Rape/Non-con Elements, Transmisogyny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-03-22 08:50:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 51,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13760541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireFleshAndBlood/pseuds/FireFleshAndBlood
Summary: Escaping Mount Massive was just the beginning. While on the run from Murkoff Waylon is forced to negotiate with a serial killer who has a crush on him, struggle to understand the gaping hole where his memories should be and try to fight off the sinking feeling that something is terribly, desperately wrong with him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the optimum experience, I suggest putting on Flowers For Bodysnatcher's excellent album 'Love Like Blood'. Turn out the lights, put the headphones in and get ready to descend but be warned, this is a hell of a ride. Enjoy.

 

 

Shadow People

 

 

I

 

The jeep was stopped on the side of the road, its right wheels almost dropping over the side of the ditch next to the skinny trees dotting along the highway. The car door was ajar but no one stepped out. It was late afternoon, nearly twilight and the bleak twist of the little used road took on a glowing appearance. Molten oranges and bright searing yellows. It looked like fire.

 

It looked like the chapel in flames.

 

The buzzing in his brain had only lessened when he had veered onto the paved junket that lead to the highway. When the jeep crossed the road he had felt like an oyster being shucked. All his insides and organs had been pulled out, eaten by violence.

 

The voices that had once given him guidance, told him where to go were all gone. There was nothing in his head but the pounding of blood, the knowledge deep in his bones that he was still in danger. He had to get off the road, pull the jeep back onto the path leading anywhere, to another place far far away.

 

“Waylon. Where are we?”

 

Waylon was startled more by the sound of his own stertorous breathing than another person sitting next to him.

 

“Are you hurt?”

 

The large hand gently stroked down the side of his face, it gave him a shiver. The man's face was familiar but Waylon couldn't place it. His vision was filled with the pattern of butterflies, demons with huge cocks, dancing multitudes of fiends swirling black and white against his eyes. He had to close them to focus. Get anything at all from the pounding in his head. Blankness filled up torturous minutes. And then it slammed into him. The crushing blow, like a freight train filled with nightmares.

 

“Jesus christ,” Waylon said, “Eddie Gluskin.”

 

It was clear a similar experience was happening to Eddie Gluskin, his expression changing from tender to terrified.

 

“I'm straight,” Waylon said, his words slurred.

 

The redness of the sunset matched the sores on his face, Waylon thought blearily, as he was grabbed by a strong hand around the throat.

 

“I'm NOT-” Eddie Gluskin spat at him, “a faggot!”

 

Waylon tried to scream but the air was cut off, he grabbed the man's arm which might as well have been made of solid steel and tried to haul it off.

 

“I _know_ you! Your face! You were one of them! Jack booted fascists! Rapists!” Eddie Gluskin shrieked, “I saw you at the computers!”

 

“Stop, for fuck's sake!” Waylon managed to scream.

 

The crush around his neck continued unabated, Waylon was sure he'd black out any second. His sense of time was completely shot, had days gone by? Months? And Lisa, his boys did they even know what had happened to him? Would he die without them knowing?

 

_Lisa._

 

“For christ's sake we're both victims of Murkoff!” Waylon choked, “I was the whistleblower, I tried to stop it!”

 

The grip lessened and Waylon sucked in a wet gasp, choking, coughing on his own spit.

 

Eddie Gluskin's hands shook when he released Waylon from his grip and his eyes went wide and wild, like he wasn't entirely sure where he was. The man rubbed his forehead, looked up blearily at the darkening sky. He opened the passenger door, stood outside of it and leaned against the jeep.

 

Terrible, agonizing seconds went by.

 

“FUCK!”

 

The expletive was screamed with a powerful punch to the side of the car that rocked the jeep slightly.

 

_I know who he is_ , Waylon thought, with a terrible sense of recognition, _he's a serial killer. He was institutionalized in Mount Massive Asylum. They screwed him up with drugs and hormone therapy and he's out now, in the real world._

 

Waylon would have been perfectly accepting if Eddie had started walking and left him to fend for himself but he sincerely doubted he would be that lucky, there weren't any buildings. No side roads, it was likely no one was around for miles. Waylon's throat hurt, his body was aching in a way entirely unfamiliar and most of his memories were a gaping cavernous wound in his head and, to top it all off, he was in a car with Eddie Gluskin, a man even his fractured memories recalled was not a good guy.

 

What the hell had happened?

 

Whatever rage Eddie Gluskin had been experiencing seemed to have passed. He was as calm as the sunset, a looming silhouette in the oncoming darkness.

 

“I'm sorry I frightened you,” Eddie Gluskin said.

 

There was something uncomfortably familiar about the way Eddie looked at him through the side car window, although it wasn't inherently threatening.

 

“Do you remember me? Because I remember you now, Waylon,” Eddie said, “I remember who you are.”

 

Eddie had an odd, far away look on his face. Blank and a little unnerving.

 

“No,” Waylon said, swallowing.

 

The bastard had nearly popped his head off in some kind of misplaced homophobic rage, his throat hurt. Waylon wasn't feeling particularly charitable.

 

“I see,” Eddie said, clearly disappointed, “if you wouldn't mind, pop the trunk.”

 

Baffled, Waylon stared at the strange man until he asked him again.

 

“The trunk,” Eddie repeated, “pop it open. The lever should be on the right.”

 

After a few minutes of checking Waylon found the release button and pulled, hearing a loud click.

 

“Who owned this?” Eddie said, loudly as he was sorting through the contents.

 

“I don't know,” Waylon said, “wait, I might.”

 

It just took him a minute to think.

 

“Miles Upshur,” Waylon said, “journalist.”

 

The last bit caught in his throat, he remembered something clearly. Just a lone image, a man on the ground by a security desk covered in blood. Glass shattered around him like fairy dust and a camcorder next to his body.

 

“I think he's dead,” Waylon said, “he was in the asylum looking for evidence.”

 

“So it's a car registered to someone Murkoff will be looking for,” Eddie said.

 

Waylon felt too delirious to even attempt standing and was content to lean into the seat. Eddie spent an inordinate amount of time rifling in the trunk, opening the storage hatch and searching every pocket.

 

“Whoever Miles Upshur was I'd bet he was a great boy scout. There's everything back here, rolled dollar bills, water, army rations, even a camera,” Eddie said, “get out and come over here.”

 

“I don't know if I can,” Waylon said.

 

“Get out and try then,” Eddie said, “can't you walk?”

 

“Fuck you're an asshole,” Waylon muttered under his breath.

 

Eddie said, “there's water. And a change of clothing that might fit. The less conspicuous we are, the better.”

 

Eddie had said something more but it had been inaudible mush.

 

“What?” Waylon said.

 

“Over here _now_ ,” Eddie said, slightly hostile.

 

When Waylon thought about it, the rage might have been a byproduct of whatever they had been dosed with while they had been enduring the tender mercies of Murkoff's medical scientists. Who knew what Waylon was going to withdraw from in the next 48 hours. He certainly felt terrible, like his head was full of buzzing. Perhaps this was the first step before becoming a slavering lunatic like some of the other inmates he had seen during his contract at the Asylum.

 

Waylon did manage a wobbly walk towards the trunk fighting vertigo most of the way.

 

“Have you ever been on the run from the law?” Eddie asked, as he slapped a bottle of water into his hand.

 

Waylon quickly drank half of it and swished around a bit in his mouth. There was an awful taste at the back of his throat that wouldn't go away, stale and coppery.

 

“No,” Waylon replied.

 

His memory might be foggy but he was pretty sure the most he'd ever incurred from the police was an annoyingly expensive parking ticket.

 

“I was for three years,” Eddie said, with more cheer than Waylon felt it warranted, “I would have gotten away too except for- well, I was careless. I wont' make that mistake twice. Murkoff would like nothing more than to pump us full of iron in the name of self defense and call it a day. Going to the cops won't help because they can be bought and I refuse to be taken in by the feds even if they screw those jack booted nazis to kingdom come. Best case scenario I'm sent to another institution where I'm sure someone will be paid to put cyanide in my morning coffee to keep me quiet.”

 

“I want to go the police,” Waylon said.

 

“Then you're my hostage,” Eddie replied, “how's that? The pigs paid off by Murkoff will make sure to kill us both in the crossfire and you'll never see your family again.”

 

Waylon swallowed, hating that Eddie was probably right.

 

No cops, then.

 

Waylon rubbed his face with the water and noticed his hands came away red. He looked at his reflection in the trunk window and realized with bleak horror he looked like he had dunked himself in a swimming pool full of blood.

 

“Christ,” Waylon said.

 

Eddie had red spatter all up over his side and across the ridiculous patchwork vest he was wearing but had still fared better in the cleanliness department. Unfortunately his face had a distinctive rash, red marks, a cut down his lip that looked angry. And his eyes were blown out red from stress or an injury.

 

“Ugh,” Eddie said, examining himself in the window's reflection, “two red eyes.”

 

“Subconjunctival hemorrhage,” Waylon muttered.

 

Eddie stared hard at him, his face a blank, peculiar mask.

 

“It goes away in a week or two,” Waylon said, hesitantly, “I was hit in the face with a ball my kid threw, once. It looks worse than it is.”

 

No further comment was made but Waylon felt nervous all the same, like everything he said was a hair's breadth away from encouraging some kind of violence. The clothes in the trunk fit Waylon although he had to roll up the sleeves on the orange shirt. The jeans felt loose but they did all right with the belt tightened, sneakers fit just barely but they'd do. Eddie found an oversized sweatshirt with a knit MIT patch on the front that fit him but nothing else. His boots and trousers were spattered but the blood was dark like oil or mud. If it weren't for the injuries on Eddie's face, they'd probably pass a first glance undetected.

 

“I'm driving,” Eddie said, “and I'm in charge. I'd rather not die because a spring chicken attempted to cross the road without looking both ways. You listen to me, do what I say. No arguments.”

 

“Fine,” Waylon said.

 

Considering the vertigo he was beginning to experience, it was likely he would have driven them straight off the road anyway. He would deal with ditching Eddie later. They got back into the car and Waylon struggled to find a comfortable position, his back was killing him.

 

“Family man?” Eddie asked.

 

“Two kids and a wife. So yeah,” Waylon said.

 

If they were still alive. Too terrifying to even contemplate the alternative.

 

“Want to go home? Have a nice little reunion? Murkoff will kill them all soon as look at them,” Eddie said.

 

“I figured that,” Waylon said, “guess I'm stuck with you until that's sorted out.”

 

Eddie laughed, it was low and bitter.

 

“They really did a number on my noggin',” Eddie said, giving Waylon an appraising look, “but what they did to you was so much worse. And you don't even remember it.”

 

Waylon stared at his hands that were covered in blood only minutes ago, they were still an unpleasant pink as water could only help so much. He had no idea whose blood it had been, where it had come from. What he had done. His body was aching all over, like muscle pulls. He could feel it all the way deep inside, pain arcing through his hips, down his groin muscles through to the back of his spine.

 

“I wish I could do that,” Eddie said, wistfully.

 

“What?” Waylon said, blinking in the sudden dark.

 

The sun had dipped entirely below the horizon. It was nighttime, the stars had come out against the scraggly trees and the lone empty road stretched endlessly into the dark.

 

“Trust me,” Eddie said, a blank coldness slipping over his features, “it's better without them.”

 

Whether Eddie was talking about Waylon's family or his missing memories, he wasn't entirely sure but in either case he disagreed. The buzzing in his head started up again, almost painful. He clenched his teeth and scrunched up his face.

 

“Your eyes,” Eddie said.

 

Waylon felt it before he touched his cheek, warm and wet.

 

“They're bleeding,” Eddie said.

 

Waylon glanced up at Eddie and he just knew. He knew what he had to do to make sure they survived. The voices were back his head, urging him on.

 

“Hold still,” Waylon said, his words slurred.

 

He reached out his hands and touched Eddie Gluskin's face. The cuts healed, his blood clotted eyes went normal, the growths all over his face lessened until they were mere faint, pink bumps.

 

The look of blank, awful terror on Eddie's face only faded when Waylon let go.

 

Waylon collapsed against the seat. He had no idea what he had just done, the voices went silent and the buzzing died away. His whole body hurt. He was so tired. He slumped into the seat and felt the awful, swirling sensation that signaled he was about to pass out.

 

Eddie's harsh breathing was the loudest sound in the jeep, shaky and tremulous. Waylon heard a lot of shuffling, some digging around in the back seat.

 

Gently, Waylon felt a damp tissue wipe his face.

 

“If only you'd let me,” Eddie's voice was strangely soft, tender, “just a small nip and tuck. Then you'd be perfect.”

 

As he was sinking Waylon was sure he could hear the sound of a buzzing saw in the dark recesses of his mind. Smell the piss stained terror and blood. See the rank looming figures wavering in the green light and feel the open, hungry maw like a lamprey from hell in front of him.

 

Then, blissful nothingness.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

II

 

When Waylon woke up again it was daylight. He was in the backseat covered by a blanket.

 

“Awake?” Eddie asked cheerfully.

 

Waylon blinked in the light, it was almost surreal. For some reason Waylon had felt like he'd never see daylight again but there it was. Blue sky, birds flying in the air and the sound of trucks and cars moving beside them. The tress were different, the area looked almost like a scrub desert.

 

“Where are we,” Waylon asked, his voice raspy, “have you been driving all night?”

 

The thought that Eddie had stopped the car and easily put Waylon into the back seat bundled up in a blanket without him waking, was disconcerting.

 

“Yep,” Eddie said, “But I'll be fine to keep going after some coffee. We're parked at a gas station, not far from the state line into New Mexico. I had to take one hell of a circuitous route to get here, I had half a mind we were being followed. Once we cross into Mexico properly, it'll get easier.”

 

Waylon struggled upright, there was no way in hell he was traveling with this man all the way to the Mexican border. He did feel a lot better, less buzzing and achy.

 

“Why don't you be a doll and get that coffee for me?” Eddie said, reaching back with some bills, “I've got something I've got to look out for here. And there's a washroom in the station, I've already been inside. Might want to use the facilities and wipe off any lingering mess.”

 

It was a perfect chance to escape Eddie Gluskin if he wanted to. Call in some back up from the feds, from 911, hell from anybody. He had to take it.

 

“Sure,” Waylon said, rubbing his eyes, “black, or?”

 

“Cream and sugar,” Eddie said, with a hint of a smile.

 

He was good looking when he smiled, Waylon thought. He could certainly see how anyone would have been fooled by Eddie Gluskin when he was a free man. Charming with a pleasant face, no one would have guessed how much of a nightmare he was until it was far too late.

 

“Take your time,” Eddie insisted, “I'll be right here, waiting.”

 

The gas station was clearly built during a more prosperous time as its décor was dated to Waylon's childhood in the eighties. Squat neon signs illuminated offerings like 'frozen' and 'pastry' over freezers that had probably seen the fifties before being deposited on the pale vinyl tile floor. The place looked like an extension had been built some years ago and in its dimly lit corner was a tiny, no name coffee shop. The door behind it was wooden and labeled 'STAFF ONLY' in faded, black marker.

 

Lisa had liked her coffee with cream, no sugar.

 

Waylon physically ached for her company but knew if he stood there thinking about it for too long, he'd be likely to break down in the aisles. Instead he kept his head straight and stood in line with the other early morning truckers and tired looking commuters.

 

The coffee was just handed to him as a large tour bus pulled up alongside the store, Waylon couldn't see the jeep from his vantage point which meant he was hidden from sight. He paid and glanced around the shop.

 

“Do you have a phone I could use?” Waylon said.

 

Almost unheard of in the era of cellphones but the tired looking woman manning the counter just nodded.

 

“Sure hun,” she said, “right around the corner by the gentleman's restrooms.”

 

“Thanks,” Waylon said.

 

He set the coffee on a well worn brown formica counter top and picked up the receiver. He could have called anybody, called for help, called the police. Damned Murkoff to hell.

 

“Waylon?”

 

He nearly collapsed when he heard Lisa's voice.

 

“Lisa, baby. I'm so sorry,” Waylon said, “I tried to do the right thing. I fucked up.”

 

“You're alive?” Lisa said, her voice sounded so hopeful, “I thought you were- no one knew what to think.”

 

“Are you all right,” Waylon said, “are our boys all right?”

 

“They miss their Dad but they're ok,” Lisa said, “where are you?”

 

“I don't have much time,” Waylon said, “but you have to leave, you have to get out. Murkoff-”

 

“I know,” Lisa said, “I'm sorry but I told them to post the footage. I couldn't refuse, not after I heard what happened, all those people killed.”

 

“Footage?” Waylon said, “What footage?”

 

In the crowd Waylon noticed two men in matching black suits, one much uglier than the other. It was perhaps a coincidence but Waylon had a sinking feeling as their eyes scanned the crowd that they were looking for someone.

 

“The camcorder you had,” Lisa said, “a journalist gave it to Mr. Peacock. Mr. Peacock used to work for Murkoff. He was the one that came to our door, he offered us a way out. I haven't said yes yet, I was afraid you'd come back and we'd be gone.”

 

Miles Upshur was alive, possibly. Maybe not for long.

 

“No one knew what happened to you,” Lisa said, “Mr. Peacock said that Miles thought you were dead but he couldn't be sure. But you aren't, you're alive, thank god!”

 

The two men in the black suits glanced at Waylon, swerved their heads in unilateral directions and began moving through the nearly empty gas station towards him. It was slow and steady, practiced to avoid notice.

 

“I can't come home,” Waylon said, stiffly, “not yet. My god, I think they've found me. Whatever Peacock tells you to do, do it. Stay safe. I don't know where or how long I'll have to run. Don't try and find me Lisa, promise me. Promise me you'll keep our boys away from that place, away from anything Murkoff. I have to go. I love you.”

 

“I promise. And I love you too,” Lisa said, her voice shaking, struggling to hold back tears.

 

Waylon hung up the phone with a depressing finality as he felt the cold butt of a gun against his back. Lisa was smarter than him in a lot of ways, she was tough. She'd make it through, even if Waylon never saw them again.

 

“There's a silencer on the gun,” the dark haired man in the suit said, “real nice and quiet. Slide into the restroom. I don't want to make a scene, we can clean this up without any violence.”

 

“No harm, no foul,” the other man said.

 

One had dark hair, the other was pale as a Swede. The dark haired man had ugly, gray mottled skin that looked infected with some kind of skin disease. The pale man was pristine, like something carved from marble but his face was stony and quiet, the sinister look of a man who killed without any inflection.

 

“Mr. Waylon Park,” the dark haired man said, “I'm real glad to see you.”

 

“Do I know you?” Waylon said.

 

His back was to the mirrors but from his left side he could see the door. To the right was a line of urinals and in front where the men were standing, some beaten to hell bathroom stalls. There didn't seem to be any clear way in or out, no place to run.

 

“We never met,” the dark haired man said, “call me Helter.”

 

“And I'm Skelter,” the pale man said, with a slight inflection.

 

“He's special order,” the dark haired man said, “from Europe. They brought in the big boys for you, Mr. Park.”

 

“Why am I so popular,” Waylon said, “I'm hardly the most important whisteblower you have on file.”

 

“I certainly agree there,” Helter said, “although that footage is pretty damning. It'll really stab ol' Murkoff corporation in the foot.”

 

Skelter made an amused sound and opened the old fashioned medical bag he carried with him.

 

“We're not here because a whistleblower blew,” Skelter said, “we're here to retrieve Murkoff's product.”

 

“Product,” Waylon said, he really didn't like where this was going.

 

“An extremely viable sample of the effects of the morphogenic machine,” Skelter snapped on some light blue surgical gloves, “possibly, the most successful yet.”

 

“I wouldn't be surprised if all that footage online was edited by the journalist and his little, weasel friend,” Helter said, “wouldn't want the common herd knowing just what you are. Just what was unleashed, then the god damn national guard would be called in.”

 

Waylon gripped the sink edge, his fingers going numb.

 

“I must give you my esteem,” Skelter said, “I'm a man of science in my home country. And to have survived what you did was no mean feat. I admire you, Park. The very heartbeat of scientific inquiry is inside of you right now powering your body.”

 

The maniacal glint in the pale man's eyes as he pulled a syringe from his bag with enough tranquilizer to put down a horse seemed at odds with any proclamation of noble scientific virtues. But behind them Waylon noticed one of the puce coloured bathroom stall doors was slowly opening.

 

It was astounding just how quiet a sizable man like Eddie Gluskin could be. He had been waiting in the restroom, probably ever since the tour bus pulled up.

 

 _Used me as a lure. Came in through the staff door. Charmed his way through the store without anyone suspecting a god damn thing,_ Waylon thought, _fuck, he's good at this._

 

Helter said, “just a pinch. Over in a minute.”

 

They were so focused on Waylon they never even saw Eddie coming. Waylon ducked just as Eddie grabbed Helter's head in his hands and smashed his face into the mirror. The scream was a terrible, gurgling thing as Eddie crushed his face until it was nothing but a bleeding, pulsating pulp. Skelter let out an astoundingly high pitched shriek before it was abruptly silenced with another smash against the mirror.

 

“Do you remember,” Eddie said, slowly, as he ripped what remained of Helter's head from the mirror and pressed it, agonizingly slow against the sink until there was just a mash of human meat oozing from his hands, “the man who used to do this?”

 

Eddie's face was a strange, blank mask. He was watching the blood and meat pool around the sink with the barest curiosity.

 

 _This violence is what he is_ , Waylon thought, _the rest is just a front._

 

“Oh god,” Waylon said, collapsing in a corner.

 

The blood was everywhere but it only hit Waylon in the face a bit, a fine spatter of living heat. He'd felt that before, he'd seen it. But it hadn't been Eddie it had been someone else.

 

_Little pig._

 

The giant shadow rose up in his mind like a monolith; big arms, huge gut and a low guttural voice. An ex-soldier who had seen terrible things that had made him sick. _Chris_. His name had been Chris. Only he hadn't been cruel the way Eddie was, he had been _nice._ Until Murkoff ripped apart his mind along with his body.

 

Waylon shook like a leaf and felt his eyes rolling up into his head.

 

“Stay with me!” Eddie shouted.

 

His hand met Waylon's cheek with a hard slap and Waylon was shocked out of it.

 

“Don't fall asleep now,” Eddie said, his eyes wide and manic, “do you remember? I'm trying to help you digest what's been done. I'm trying to help.”

 

Eddie Gluskin didn't help people, he murdered them.

 

“Good, god,” Waylon spasmed on the bloody floor, “no, please no.”

 

_A room. It was white and on the walls were eyes and crosses, drawn crudely. There were words too, sermons painted in red by the priest who worshiped him._

 

“ _Holy mother of god,” the man murmured as he kissed Waylon's hand, “you have given me an apostle.”_

 

“The things I've done for you,” Eddie said, clutching him, “it makes a man feel a bit less when he's not remembered by someone he admires. But I'll just have to keep trying.”

 

Waylon shuddered, crushing his eyes shut against the gore, the madness the terrifying memories lapping at the edges of his mind.

 

“They'll be pouring in here soon from the buses but we'll be gone by then. Wipe off your hands, don't step in the blood. It's not that bad. See? They were going to take you away. Back to Murkoff. I couldn't let that happen, not after what we've been through together,” Eddie said, his breath whispering past Waylon's ear as he helped Waylon to his feet.

 

_It comes unbidden, like a bad dream. Another memory, something more concrete. Waylon can feel the stirrups and straps of the wheelchair, he's doped up so severely he can barely see straight. Across from him is a man strapped to a bed._

 

“ _Hey, I know him,” the man said, raising his head as far as he could from the restraints._

 

_The man is Eddie Gluskin and he's strapped in tight to a gurney two orderlies are beginning to move._

 

“ _Stop this thing,” Eddie said, “come on! I saw him in a dream! The-the blood dream! Let me talk, just five minutes.”_

 

“ _Keep it down, fucking bullshitter,” the orderly said, clearly his give a crap had long ago been broken, “where's he going?”_

 

“ _Downstairs,” the other one replied._

 

“ _There's no room,” the unenthusiastic orderly had said._

 

“ _They'll figure out something, there's a storage area for arts and crafts. We'll just block off part of it, put in a few beds for some of the other failures. See what happens next.”_

 

“ _Can't you stop this thing?” Eddie had said, his face had been scabbed, busted up, his eyes blown and red._

 

_Waylon had lifted his head slightly and gazed up at the gurney as it had swept by._

 

“ _I think he has a crush on you,” the man behind him had said, his voice slick and oily, “but we both know I'm the only one who gets to offer special care to my pal Waylon.”_

 

_Waylon shuddered, the creep was his caretaker. The hideous Andrew and the things the man had done to him, he didn't want to think about._

 

“Up we go,” Eddie said, gently coaxing him, “I'll get a towel.”

 

It was another gentle dabbing to his face just like a parent would do to a child and Waylon was shaking so badly he wasn't in any position to argue about it. The world was tilted on its axis, his vision was blurring into butterflies, strange shapes and colours.

 

“Stay with me, look at me,” Eddie said while holding his head gently, “that's better. Focus. Deep breaths.”

 

The corner of the bathroom was capturing Waylon's attention much more than Eddie's attempts at calming him down. There were strange figures standing there looking at him, about four feet tall. They had eyes red as blood and dark, shadowy bodies that wavered in and out of Waylon's vision.

 

“We're going to leave now,” Eddie said, “walk slowly to the jeep like nothing happened. Are you ready?”

 

The figures vanished into the floor just as suddenly as they had appeared.

 

“Yeah,” Waylon said, “I'm ready.”

 

The buses had multiplied the patrons to a level the single cashier was having trouble dealing with. All the noise and sounds as buses rolled in had disguised any screams that had come from the restrooms. It was easy to slip by the coffee counter and into the staff exit, they hadn't even attracted a single concerned glance in their direction.

 

The Murkoff team had arrived in something that screamed official business, the sleek black car stood out and not just because it was parked in the fire lane.

 

The front door was open.

 

Waylon darted from Eddie's grip.

 

“Hey, come back!” Eddie said, slightly panicked.

 

“I need a computer!” Waylon said, crawling into the back seat.

 

The operatives fought with guns and technology and Waylon may not have a gun or even know how to shoot one but he knew computers a hell of a lot better than Murkoff.

 

“Grab the black briefcase,” Eddie said, leaning over him.

 

Waylon yanked everything he could from the backseat. Two laptops, a cellphone, several chargers for who knows what and a strange black briefcase that was particularly weighty.

 

“Give me the case,” Eddie said, “dump the rest in the backseat.”

 

After hauling open the jeep door and dumping everything he could, Waylon felt a sudden sense that he was being watched.

 

“I thought so,” Eddie said, closing the trunk, “there was a third one.”

 

Waylon swore he could feel a bullet run a hair by his left cheek. The loud thunking sound as it buried itself in car metal made Waylon pale.

 

“Christ,” Waylon said, stuffing himself in the passenger side, “drive, Eddie!”

 

As tempting as it was, Waylon knew trying to run over the woman standing in the road holding a silenced automatic rifle was foolish. She'd shoot them dead before they even got halfway up the parking lot. Instead they turned tail and Eddie made sure they were accelerating at a good clip before grinning at Waylon.

 

“Exciting, isn't it?” he said, with far too much enthusiasm.

 

Waylon wanted to throw up.

 

“You called your family, didn't you,” Eddie said, far more subdued.

 

Waylon turned to look at Eddie who had that strange, blank far away look on his face again.

 

“Yeah,” Waylon said, “but not the cops.”

 

“It'll do you good having said your goodbyes,” Eddie said, “I don't think you'll see them again for a long while. Might not even want to, after you remember.”

 

A cold chill ran up and down Waylon's spine. What was Eddie implying? He obviously knew far more than Waylon did and it made him deeply uncomfortable. Nothing on earth would keep him away from his family for long, Eddie was seriously underestimating Waylon's ability to escape the fresh hell they were in.

 

Eddie turned on the radio. He switched it a golden oldies station and hummed along with the songs.

 

_He can sing because he was in a church choir as a boy. But these aren't his favourite songs, they're from a century ago. Cheerful, wholesome melodies to chase away the demons inside._

 

Shaking himself free of things he didn't want to recall, Waylon reached into the back seat and grabbed the cellphone and ripped out the SIM card from the back. Then he powered it down, took out the battery and checked for what he figured would be there.

 

“What's that?” Eddie asked, when he glanced over.

 

“Murkoff's home brew tracker,” Waylon said, “we can drop this on the way, it'll slow them down.”

 

“Good thinking darling,” Eddie said cheerfully, “we'll be staying at a motel for two nights before crossing over into Mexico. I don't know about you, but I could do with some sleep and a recharge before the rest of our trip.”

 

 _Maybe he does have a crush on me_ , Waylon thought, despairingly, _that's all I need. A man with a crush on another man who's more than a bit touchy about being labeled a homosexual._

 

What the hell was wrong with this guy?

 

Waylon already knew though, Eddie was a monster let loose on society.

 


	3. Chapter 3

III

 

The inn was a shady place close to the border on an off ramp highway that had clearly seen better days. It looked like a throw back to the fifties with large, half broken bubble letters announcing 'clean rooms' and 'vacancies' with a row of cabin like mini-homes that functioned as guest accommodations. There was however, a taped on sign in lousy handwriting at the reception desk announcing 'free wi-fi'. If Waylon guessed correctly, it was probably a single cable line split between rooms. It wasn't totally useless but certainly not ideal for hacking a mega-corporation's business line. But besides the reception desk and an older man who looked like he'd been there about as long as the inn itself, they were alone and that meant the bandwidth would probably be good enough.

 

The car was half unpacked, Eddie stashed the heavy case under the seats and took some of the food and sundries he had bought from the store before the agents had shown up. They planned for laundry in the morning, it was a depressing reality that they'd have to wait to even find a change of clothes but cleaning what they had would be a start.

 

“Is there a store nearby?” Eddie asked the woman at reception.

 

“Mini-mall About half a mile,” she said, barely looking up from her cellphone, “we got some things at the desk here. Basics like shampoo and toothbrushes. Laundry is in the last cabin to the left, coin operated. None of those fancy cards work.”

 

Eddie gazed at her up and down. She was a pretty brunette, perhaps in her late twenties.

 

_He kills women_ , Waylon thought, with a sudden recollection, _and he's checking her out._

 

“Thanks” Waylon said, snapping up the keys from the desk, “we'd better clear out, there's a long drive ahead after tomorrow.”

 

Whether or not Eddie would risk blowing their cover by murdering a receptionist, Waylon wasn't sure but he certainly didn't want to find out.

 

“I wasn't going to,” Eddie said, “there's no need to be jealous.”

 

Eddie reached out and gave Waylon's right earlobe a playful tug.

 

Waylon darted away, panicked.

 

Eddie had that look again, the flat, cold look of a killer but it eased just a little. Enough that Waylon didn't feel that he was required to make a run into the scrub brush to save his own life.

 

“I wish you'd remember,” Eddie said, his voice wistful, “just a little something.”

 

Waylon doubted he'd ever want to.

 

The room was all right, not the worst Waylon had ever stayed in but far from the best. Two double beds, kitchenette, decent sized bathroom that was clean enough to use without dry heaving and a small selection of toiletries under the sink. The décor looked like it belonged in the nineties washed out beige department of Walgreens but Waylon was just glad the amenities had been updated since Reagan.

 

“I'm showering first,” Eddie said, “then going to bed for a few hours.”

 

“The computer won't keep you up, will it?” Waylon asked.

 

Waylon froze. He had thought out of habit he was asking his wife.

 

“No,” Eddie said, after a pause, “it won't bother me. What are you doing with that thing, anyway?”

 

Waylon figured Eddie was fishing if there were other ways to get a message out to say, the police or the FBI. It seemed he lacked some basic knowledge about computers, he might not even understand e-mail. But there was also a chance he was playing dumb, he clearly had enough know how to fuck over two agents from Murkoff without batting an eye. Waylon really didn't know how far Eddie's skills went in any direction.

 

_Eddie's Mom taught him how to sew, she won an award at the county fair with her wedding dress._

 

Waylon wondered how he knew these strange little facts, wondered if he knew anything actually useful. Figured he probably didn't. He had to focus.

 

“I'm trying to find Murkoff's medical files,” Waylon said, “I don't want my brains leaking out my ears in the next forty-eight hours because I was unprepared for a withdrawal.”

 

There it was again, that strange cold silence and blank stare Waylon was starting to associate with some kind of repressed violence. Waylon swallowed and focused on plugging in the laptop. If he was going to killed, it would have happened already. Unless Eddie was quietly filing away all that rage for later. Even then, it wasn't something Waylon needed to worry about that minute.

 

When Waylon heard the shower turn on with a dull thud to the water pipes, he figured he was probably in the clear for now.

 

Waylon turned on the computer and booted it to Murkoff's in house operating system. There was everything right out in plain view, not even password protected. Waylon knew that Murkoff, while a multi-billion dollar scientific research corporation, liked to cut costs where they could. Part of that cost cutting measure had been only hiring the bare minimum contracted computer technicians, everything was still the same system Waylon had helped build. The very operating system he had helped jerry rig with five other remote technicians that got him his final contract at Mount Massive.

 

It had seemed so great at the time, a big job just in time to pay for the health insurance, the bills, his massive student loan from Berkeley. They'd been living off of Lisa's short term marketing gigs for far too long with two little boys to clothe and feed and keep entertained in an expensive city. It had been a bitter pill to swallow that New York on paper didn't mean so much when competition was that intense and he'd never been a great schmoozer. His social skills were a little rocky outside of work and he hadn't made the contacts his rich roommates had, or his best friend who went out west with a fully paid package from his Dad's dad's friend. Or even Lisa who was sweet and kind most of the time but knew when to tell a business shark to fuck off. Her bosses had loved her and hated to see her go when it seemed they finally had to leave New York for Colorado or they'd be bankrupt in a year.

 

What halcyon days they had been in their shitty apartment that barely passed code eating take away above the New Jersey commuter line. He'd hated it at the time but he'd give anything to be back there now.

 

“Christ,” Waylon whispered while scanning the internal folders, “they have an encyclopedia on me.”

 

Things like where he had last worked before Murkoff, what his favourite food was, even asinine research on what day jobs he had worked as a student in various low level internships for bottom of the barrel companies. Previous addresses for all his residences. Such extensive information was meant to hasten the agent's ability to track him down based on professional connections, the files would have been understood to be long term. Clearly, they were in it for the long haul. The Murkoff executives wanted their _product_ returned to them, whatever method that entailed.

 

It seemed the in depth medical files were buried deep, if there at all. They would, if Waylon recalled correctly, require the appropriate passwords to access. But it was easy breaking into a lock you had helped build, he wouldn't have any trouble once he actually found the damn things. Like most things at Murkoff, Waylon had a feeling this particular laptop would have been recycled from something else. The files were there, just invisible and he knew the exact lines of code that would bring them up.

 

There were no medical files, Waylon was disappointed to discover, but there was something else. A rather lengthy list of names on a strangely titled document. There were sixteen that were emphasized with an in program highlighter.

 

EXT. MEMO. FLDR.SRVR.TOPPRIO.EUTH3.doc

 

Albrite Tuttle x

Arthur Tuttle x

Chris Walker x

Dennis Leblanc x

Eddie Gluskin

Frank Manera x

Harry Martin x

Jerry Wedgewood x

Johan Hirst x

Malcolm French x

Martin Archimbaud x

Sammy Wilkenson x

Steve 'Sharpy' Colter

Richard Trager x

William Hope x

 

X=CONFIRMED

 

“My god,” Waylon said, realizing what the document was spelling out, “this is a kill list.”

 

_Euthanasia 3._

 

Judging by the number there had been three other lists used by various operatives. He had accessed the filed away junk left by Murkoff's clean up crew.

 

Waylon's head felt like it was splitting from the dim light emanating from the screen, he was tired and frustrated and he hadn't even noticed Eddie going to bed since he had been so engrossed in getting the files up and running. He needed water and then sleep.

 

Waylon miserably closed the laptop and pressed his palms against his eyes. He was still seeing the strange shapes when he closed his eyes, the butterflies and monsters but it was manageable now. He would have a shower in the morning, after a quick drink of water from the dubious bathroom sink he crawled into bed and immediately passed out.

 

It may have been a mistake, Waylon would consider later, to go to sleep knowing that he wasn't as exhausted as he had been the day before and that the nightmares would be waiting.

 

“ _My taste doesn't normally run to the exotic,” Trager's voice is a terrible grate on the nerves, more so when he's strapped Waylon's body to a gurney, “I'm a straight laced kind of guy. Always liked blonds, I admit to that one but they usually came with big, bouncy tits. But you've got a man cunt I could market, a sweet honey pot just begging for attention. Let's put that hiney to work with a little help from me of course.”_

 

_Waylon writhes on the cot. His mouth is shut with patient straps, his arms buckled in. There's no where for him to go but closer to Trager's blood stained table._

 

“ _Who knows what they'd sell me to have a moment with their dearly beloved,” Trager gleams in the darkness, the redness of his nude muscles, his skin worn away to the flesh underneath. Bursting from the horrific morphogenic hormones, “Why, I won't have to go looking for product it'll come right to me. And if I take a little extra, a few bits to pay the piper playing a tune in my pocket, who's gonna know?”_

 

_With a hard pinch to Waylon's thigh he leers over him. Unfulfilled ambitions are a hell of a trip and this man is full of them._

 

“ _I loved all our dreamy dates, but they always left me wanting more” Trager said, pinching his cheek, “I'm going to set up a room just for you. So you can keep us all company here in our happy little surgery. And then I'm going to fuck you until you can't move, tie you to a gurney and fuck you some more. Until every hole is raw as hamburger and I have to stitch it up after just so you can take a shit. How's that sound? Still doing good? Make you wet inside? I'd call you honey but I'm pretty sure you're more of a sweetheart type.”_

 

_Waylon is trying not to give in to the ugliness of fear. He knows what this man is like, knows him intimately. Has seen his blood dreams. But the fear wins out and he's sure he's giving Trager jack off material for months when tears slip down his cheeks and his body begins to shake from sheer, exhausted terror._

 

“ _Try not to piss yourself sweetheart,” Trager says, “we got enough to clean up as it is.”_

 

_The camcorder is sitting next to him on the gurney, trembling with each dip in the hallway._

 

“ _Wouldn't want to ruin that beautiful outfit the Clark Gable wannabe made for you,” Trager says and runs his hands down Waylon's blood stained front, “I'm a little concerned with how much time you're spending with that guy. We all have our foibles its' true but he's convinced he's a straight man while plowing man pussy, he might be a little delusional. I know he'd personally prefer to have the ol' garden snake on the front lopped off but we won't give him the satisfaction, now will we?”_

 

_Trager grabs Waylon's cock and Waylon writhes into his hand like he's possessed. He arches his back screaming from behind the restraints on his mouth. He needs-_

 

“ _The real question is how many hormones did they pump into your blood stream to make a family oriented type just that wild for dick.”_

 

_Trager lets go of his crotch and Waylon begins shaking on the gurney. It's just a fear, to be made less of a man somehow by what's happened to him. They're all victims here, it's a litany he can repeat in his head that gives him great comfort. Far more useful than one of father Martin's prayers._

 

“ _I mean, if I opened you up, took a look around I might be able to make a clear diagnosis if any of its tumorous,” Trager says, grinning maniacally, “but sweetheart, you're worth far more money alive than dead. And we wouldn't want to upset our dear friend downstairs, I heard he's looking for you. I can't wait to find out what he'll sell me to get another taste of that sweet, bitch cunt.”_

 

_The buzzing in his ears arcs loud, louder. He itches all over, like sand particles under his skin. He needs his medicine to stop this from happening, he needs to get off the damn gurney to find it. Trager caresses the side of his face with his mutant, fucked up fingernails and stabs a syringe into his neck._

 

“ _Jesus wept, sweetheart,” the words Trager speak warp and twist._

 

There was a loud noise when Waylon woke up because he had hauled the lamp out from the plug on the wall to use as a weapon. He flailed in the sepia toned sunlight for a few minutes until he realized he was entirely alone.

 

The room was empty, Eddie had long ago disappeared to who knows where and Waylon would have celebrated except his head began to hurt at a level approaching excruciating. He dropped the lamp and collapsed off the bed sliding across the floral bed spread onto the floor. The world was blurring around the edges. The patterns appeared swirling in front of his eyes; demons, massive dicks, huge laughing fiends with fire in their eyes.

 

He staggered to the bathroom wondering if he was going to throw up. The mirror was big enough to show just how much Waylon had suffered by the dark circles under his eyes, his stringy unwashed curls and the lightly mottled skin around his neck in finger patterns. His abdomen stung. He lifted up his shirt and gasped.

 

There was a bruised hand print across half his waist. No wonder he had hurt so much when he first gained consciousness in the jeep. It was far too large to belong to Eddie Gluskin, too big to belong to the terrifying surgeon in his nightmare.

 

“Chris Walker,” Waylon said the name out loud, his heart pounding.

 

There had been an 'x' on his name, he was dead then. Nothing to fear.

 

But no, Waylon recalled, he wasn't the one to be afraid of. There were other marks on his hip, they were smaller, tiny scratches. Less intimidating at first glance but far more frightening.

 

_The sound of a saw buzzing._

 

“ _Let me cook for you”, hissed into his ear._

 

Waylon clamped a hand over his mouth, he didn't want to remember any of it. He didn't.

 

But he did.

 

“ _You're mine,” Frank Manera said._

 

_Frank Manera was the one that had found him first. He had pulled him down dark hallways barely lit from rain soaked windows. Stripped him nude, tied Waylon to a chair and made him watch as Frank hacked into a security guard, forced Waylon's face into the open ribcage like a child forcing a kitten to drink milk._

 

“ _Eat,” Frank had said, his eyes wide and manic, “love him.”_

 

_Waylon had taken a single, terrified bite before he was violently sick._

 

_But that wasn't the worst part. The worst was that Frank had taken no offense. He had only pushed the polluted corpse to the floor, picked up another fresh victim from a stack. Frank opened him up and forced Waylon's face inside the man's guts while he bent Waylon over the table._

 

“ _I know what you are,” Frank had said, rapturously, “I dreamed you.”_

 

“ _Please,” Waylon tried to say but he had been drowned out by the blood clogging his mouth, the warm organs in his face._

 

_Frank's hand had pressed his head down into the offal but he wasn't sick this time, a different need was taking precedence. He hadn't had his medicine in ages, had no idea where it might be. The frustrated wannabe doctor could have stolen it, or the lost, lonely boy downstairs. Or perhaps the twin poets who finished each others sentences. They all knew what he was, they were looking for him too._

 

“ _Open wide for me,” Frank hissed._

 

_Waylon spread his legs. He needed whatever was in their bodies, whatever fluid could pour out of them into his._

 

“ _Oh yeah,” Frank groaned, “you're hungry for meat too, I can see it.”_

 

_Taking a dick up his ass was supposed to be more difficult, Waylon had thought. But his insides were wet, red and warm. He didn't need any outside help to get the cannibal's cock to slide in easy. It felt so good, he knew he'd needed it. Damn Andrew and his glorified turkey baster in the lab, this was the real thing. Pure animal fucking._

 

“ _Take a bite,” Frank hissed, “taste it, while I fill you up.”_

 

_The hormone treatment did some pretty strange things to men's libidos, Frank didn't stop after coming once. He went on forever. And Waylon didn't care after the first load in him, he didn't give one fucking shit that the man under him was dead. That he came white, hot, wet jizz while being fucked by a cannibal all over another human being's puke stained organs at his feet. The dead man on the table was just another casualty._

 

_And after Frank had treated him so good, it was the least he could do._

 

_He took a bite._

 


	4. Chapter 4

IV

 

The mind forgot to protect itself from injury, or at least that what Waylon had recalled from a pamphlet he had read while waiting in a doctor's office when Lisa was pregnant with their first child. That had been a complicated time, filled with nervous excitement. He'd forgotten to charge his phone, he must have flipped through dozens of terrible magazines, wellness leaflets, vibrated his right leg against a table until the receptionist told him to quit it or get out. They hadn't seriously considered children at that point in their relationship but after Waylon saw the sonogram he knew it had been the right choice to go through with it. They had both wanted a family.

 

The happy moments seemed so long ago. It was hard for Waylon to recognize his own face in the bathroom mirror, so pale and haggard compared to how he'd looked before, strong and full of life. A proud father, a family man. Someone who made love to his wife. He felt like something else, now.

 

There wasn't anything more Waylon could do except have a breakdown, so instead he decided he would eat some food. Try to forget how pink his piss had been, if it was something to worry about. _What the fuck did the medicine keep at bay, was he going to die? Bleed to death from every orifice in a matter of days?_ Sit at the computer and try to figure out if there was anything else he could glean from it. If there was a way to find the medicine he apparently needed. Try very hard not to give in to screaming, maddening despair.

 

He was a victim. They were all victims. Some were just hit harder and in stranger places than others.

 

_Please forgive me, Lisa._

 

The files he was digging for weren't on the home network, Waylon had to dig deeper. He had learned from his mistakes that had gotten him institutionalized the first time by Murkoff. He wouldn't make them again.

 

Disguise everything, follow up with a nasty ass worm to eat the shit out of their computers, take no prisoners. If the Asylum servers were still online and Waylon deeply suspected they were, they would still be getting cleaned up by Murkoff's remaining techs. They were a bunch who in Waylon's estimation, were at most their B-team. He should have a fair chance of retrieving what he wanted if he acted fast.

 

It took him almost three hours but he had succeeded. The medical files were now in his possession on a stolen laptop.

 

“YES!” he said, when the last file had been dumped onto his computer, pumping up his fists.

 

The worm took effect immediately, his line in was extinguished. He wished he'd had a camera pointed at Murkoff's sorry excuse for a tech team when they tried to put out the digital fires.

 

“Those sons of bitches will be cleaning up this little mess for months _,”_ Waylon said, it was a pleasant revenge, no matter how small compared to the damage they had done.

 

The door to their room clicked open.

 

“I'm home,” Eddie said.

 

His voice was like a shock to the system, a hard cut back to reality. Waylon dropped his arms and felt the fear move through him. The sudden knowledge that something had happened between them, something terrible and only Eddie could remember anything about it.

 

“I bought us clothes,” Eddie said, setting down some bags on Waylon's unmade bed, “and toiletries.”

 

Eddie glanced at the disaster area that was Waylon's makeshift computer desk covered in wires and frantic scribbles of code on notepads.

 

“I see you've been busy,” Eddie said, wryly.

 

“I-,” Waylon said, licking his lips, “left you a sandwich in the fridge.”

 

_He looks nervous._

 

_I would like to kill him._

 

_As would I._

 

Waylon shut his eyes briefly to block out the voices in his head, the strange figures that had whispered in lime green fog while standing next to him. The memory was hazy but he recalled he had been pressed up against a fence, waiting. Listening for someone. When he opened his eyes he noticed the strange blank expression on Eddie's face again. It was only for a second, then it broke out into a welcoming smile.

 

“You made me dinner,” Eddie said, pleased.

 

He really hadn't. The sandwich was a leftover that Waylon couldn't bring himself to eat when his gaze had lingered on the sandwich meat for too long. He wasn't sure if he'd ever be able to eat it again. At least he knew why...

 

Waylon continued filing what he had downloaded from Murkoff while Eddie quietly ate, tidied up the mess in the room to an almost neurotic degree and began unpacking their bags. Waylon's clothes were left on his bed along with some sundries like deodorant and toothbrushes. Embarrassingly on the top of the pile were men's briefs in red. Waylon actually preferred boxers but he wasn't about to make an issue out of it, he was probably fortunate Eddie hadn't bought him women's underpants. Eddie looked more ordinary after he had redressed himself in a blue dress shirt that he had tucked into his trousers, black denim and a matching button up sweater. His face had healed well, it was light pink enough that a bit of a cover up stick would hide the worst of it.

 

_He dresses like somebody's grandpa,_ Waylon thought, _or a try too hard hipster._

 

“A shower might do you some good,” Eddie said, pointedly.

 

“In a minute,” Waylon said, he was backing up his files, “there's no shaving kit for me.”

 

He wished he had access to a cloud but doubles sent to a throw away e-mail address would have to do.

 

“If you haven't noticed,” Eddie said, with a hint of superiority, “it's not like you've had to shave a whole lot recently.”

 

Waylon paused mid key stroke and felt a slight form of rising panic. He grabbed fresh clothes from the piles Eddie had brought home with him, then rushed into the bathroom and leaned in close to the mirror. He didn't have a five o'clock shadow. No facial hair growth, nothing. His hair had grown some since his stay in the asylum, that much was clear. His blonde curly hair was just past his ears, maybe a little longer when wet. His chest was also bare but he had chalked that up to surgery prep when he had seen his scars. Waylon somehow doubted Murkoff was dosing him with anything as banal as ordinary estrogen which had a tendency to impede male body hair growth but clearly it was a different mix of hormones than the morphogenic machine patients were normally given.

 

The unreality of his situation lessened after a shower. The blood was all washed away from under his clothes, skin cleaned until Mount Massive Asylum was only bruises and scrapes, a terrible distant memory. He stared at himself when he got out, drying his body carefully trying to notice if anything was off. Nothing was horrifyingly different than before, just bruises that had changed colours. But something, somewhere deep inside felt wrong.

 

The jeans were his size but a rough washed gray denim, very soft. They fit tighter than he'd like, though he was sure Lisa would have approved. The t-shirt was flat white, there was an over shirt in a similar style to what he preferred to wear in soft, red plaid. He almost cried when he saw the familiar chuck sneakers in plain black and white along with white cotton socks. Waylon wondered how Eddie had known any of his preferences and then he remembered. Eddie had seen Waylon quite clearly. When Eddie had been pressed up against the glass while Murkoff security was trying to force him into the morphogenic machine. Waylon flexed his triceps in the mirror, the muscles could have shrunk a bit from lack of exercise and nutritious food as much as anything else. It was almost impossible to say what his body was actually going through.

 

“I need to find those files,” Waylon said, bursting from the bathroom in a rush.

 

He felt angry his body had been violated by whatever passed as their twisted science. Anger was good. It kept him focused.

 

He sat at his desk and began opening every medical file he had downloaded. It was a mess, Murkoff wasn't known for its in house filing system. Most things were dumped regularly onto various servers with no consideration as to their content at all. It would be a hell of a search to find something that specific unless he went through the patient files. Which it seemed were buried under a ton of general observations made by Murkoff's best and brightest concerning their patients, all organized by numbers and not names. It would take him ages at this rate, unless he could remember his patient number.

 

“Do you remember my patient number?” Waylon asked, it was a long shot but a possibility.

 

Eddie had leaned back on his tidied bed and gazed up at the ceiling.

 

“I suppose you're looking for your medication,” Eddie said, placidly.

 

“Yeah,” Waylon said, “no idea what that would be either. Pills? Injection? Something-”

 

Waylon turned his head and stared. Next to Eddie on his nightstand was a plain, white bottle with a single dried bloody finger print smeared across the front.

 

“You had them,” Waylon said, slowly, “all this time.”

 

“My memory is a little hazy,” Eddie admitted, “I'm not sure if I had them the entire time, or just before we left Mount Massive. That was quite an adventure, your boss almost killed you.”

 

It was an ugly but soul soothing picture that popped into his head. Jeremy Blair bleeding out by the door that would lead them outside.

 

Waylon said, “is he dead? I don't remember.”

 

“Very,” Eddie said, with a cold satisfaction even Waylon could appreciate.

 

Waylon darted towards the nightstand but Eddie snatched the pill bottle up before he could grab them.

 

“What the hell are you doing!” Waylon shouted, “give them back! I might die without them!”

 

“You won't die,” Eddie said, shaking the bottle, “I know what they're for. Well, I'm not a chemist I'll admit but I've seen their effects first hand.”

 

“How?” Waylon shouted.

 

“I want you to remember,” Eddie said.

 

Waylon let out a frustrated half-scream, “I can't!”

 

“Yes you can,” Eddie said, “just try a little harder.”

 

“Screw you!” Waylon shouted, “ Every memory I have of that place is sick and filled with nightmares! I don’t' want to remember being tortured by a surgeon or kidnapped by a cannibal! All I know is your name and what you used to do, you murderer and I hope it stays that way! Now give me my god damn pills!”

 

Waylon realized he had perhaps made a bit of a mistake getting angry in a small, easily overlooked room at the ass end of nowhere with an emotionally unbalanced serial killer withdrawing from who knows what staring him down.

 

“I see,” Eddie said, “so, you remember them but not me. You remember the other ones, before I found you wandering lost and alone, nearly bleeding to death and took you in. Cared for you with my own two hands, cleaned your wounds kept you away from the rest of them-!”

 

“I can barely remember anything about anyone else either,” Waylon tried to back track, diffuse the situation, “nothing I'd want to.”

 

“Liar!” Eddie said, “I can see it in your eyes. Sometimes you act just like the others, all those whores but I know better! I know what you're really like inside because we had something special. You don't want to be like them, like all the other sluts. You're trying to be better!”

 

“I don't know what you're talking about!” Waylon shouted, desperate.

 

It was a split second before Waylon felt the hand around his neck and the world tilt as he was hurled down to the carpeted floor.

 

Eddie was astoundingly strong. In retrospect, it had been very stupid to let his guard down around a homicidal enraged serial killer, even for a minute.

 

Waylon coughed as the breath had been punched out of him by his fall. Eddie was on top of him, pressing his arms down with the edges of his knees, holding Waylon's legs down with his weight. He couldn't nail him in the balls, he couldn't fight or scratch with his hands.

 

_This is it_ , Waylon thought, terrified beyond anything he'd imagined, _I'm going to die here. His delusions got the better of him and he's going to kill me._

 

“I've been very patient,” Eddie said, his face twisted in a rage, “a good listener. Haven't I been a caring husband? Even when my wife forgets-”

 

“I'm not your fucking wife!” Waylon shouted.

 

He received a strong slap against his head that left him dazed.

 

“Even when she _forgets her place_!” Eddie snarled, “It's all right. No need to be afraid. I'm here to remind you, to be sure you don't stray. I made an honest woman of you once, I can do it again!”

 

It sounded much more like a threat than a declaration of romance. Waylon swallowed thickly, his throat hurt and he could barely breathe. Didn't most serial killers prefer strangulation? Or was that crimes of passion? It was intimate, that was for certain. After all, the shortest distance between love and violence was ruined lust.

 

“I- I remembered something,” Waylon said, trembling, “from before. Your mom taught you how to sew, she won an award at a fair with her wedding dress. You were in a church choir as a boy, that's why you can sing so well. You like playing old records.”

 

For a brief moment Eddie's face took on the look of a confused, lost boy.

 

_That's what he really is_ , Waylon thought, _not violence or ruined lust. A boy who never grew up. Terrible things happened to him, awful things were done long before Murkoff and its damned engine. He never had a chance, no one gave a shit until it was much too late to go back. To recapture that lost childhood._

 

 Waylon shook himself. He had to think fast, had to save his own life.

 

“I'm sorry I don't remember. I'm grateful for whatever you did for me back there,” Waylon said, choking on each word, “I didn't mean to make you angry.”

 

It worked. Eddie's grip eased up, the rage that had twisted his features died away to be replaced with a frightening blankness. It was doubtful Eddie's murder victims had ever attempted to apologize to him while being killed, Waylon thought with some disgust. It might have lengthened their lives considerably.

 

Or maybe Waylon was just special, an equally nauseating possibility.

 

Waylon coughed, “I feel sick.”

 

The headache was returning, like an itch. A persistent, irritating buzz. It was the last thing he needed.

 

“I'll get you some ice,” Eddie said, after an awkward quiet, “for your neck.”

 

The hall had an ancient ice machine, Eddie came back with a bag and a plastic bucket and he filled it carefully. Waylon had remained on the carpeted floor, his head feeling like it was going to split any second.

 

Gently, Eddie supported his head and pressed the ice to his sore neck. It reminded Waylon of something he'd rather forget, a series of days beneath the sounds of a world gone insane.

 

“ _Hush,” Eddie had said, “There you are, good girl. Lean into my hands, it'll hurt less after its snapped back into the ankle.”_

 

_A piece of wood was put in his mouth for his teeth to grip. The resounding crunch from his ankle followed by blistering pain was bad enough he would have screamed if he had the strength. Clenching the wood helped a bit but not by much._

 

“ _I'm so happy I found you,” Eddie had said, his face a scarred mess, his eyes red and bleeding, “I knew you were the one, even back then. All the idiots and lunatics in this place saw how special you were but they didn't see as well as I did. Didn't bother to discover all of your secrets. Ah, the smell of my love's arbor-”_

 

_Eddie had leaned over him and taken in a deep breath, as though smelling the most beautiful bouquet of roses. It was far from anything Waylon could hope to smell in his current position, the room was filled with the vile overwhelming stench of coppery blood._

 

“ _But a flower is only as sweet as the soil that nourishes it. And yours needs nourishing, pruning and care,” Eddie had said, his gentle stroke down the side of Waylon's face had left a trail of red, “I know you aren't like the others, though we've all made mistakes it's true. And I have made a few with my wandering gaze before I met you. But I promise to make an honest woman of you, under a bower of love. For the children.”_

 

_Eddie had laid his hands on Waylon's abdomen and Waylon had struggled on the makeshift bed, his wrists attached to the wall with chains wrapped in rope but he felt so weak, so tired. Especially after..._

 

“ _I'll be the father I never had. I won't let anything happen to them,” Eddie had said, with manic conviction, “not like-”_

 

_His gaze had wandered and Waylon saw them standing there, the shadow figures. Their eyes glowing red, gleeful._

 

_Approving._

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

V

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, while laying on the carpet, “what are they?”

 

“Our children,” Eddie said, with fondness, “I haven't seen them since leaving Mount Massive. But I can still feel them sometimes when you're asleep. I suppose a bit of distance comes with fatherhood.”

 

The figures were there standing in their room, one of them even sat on the edge of the bed with its shadowy legs dangling. It looked like one of Waylon's boys if they had been reduced to an inky stain.

 

“I'm not a woman,” Waylon said carefully, “I can't give birth.”

 

There had been problems with female employees, Waylon remembered that from water cooler talk when he had been employed by Murkoff. Some kind of neurosis or after effect of the therapy emanating from the mountain. The women had thought they were pregnant but it had turned out to be only a simulated pregnancy and not a real one. Waylon hadn't ever learned what had happened to these previous Murkoff employees but he had a terrible feeling it wasn't good.

 

“Normally that's how these things go,” Eddie said, “but I watched you do it. It was-”

 

Eddie was nearly overcome with emotion.

 

“It was a miraculous thing,” Eddie said, “I made something in the asylum to commemorate the occasion. I doubt you remember it. But it was impressive.”

 

_The sound of a record playing an old song, a bloated corpse stuffed to imitate breasts with its head ripped off. A make shift nurse made out of a security guard's corpse. The moment of birth reformed, remade. A mockery of what Waylon had witnessed when he had been with Lisa during the birth of their children._

 

“There was so much blood,” Eddie said dreamily, “and screaming. And pain. But the fairer sex, they often endure the same wounds with more suffering. I knew what to expect.”

 

Waylon felt Eddie gently stroke down his hair and he wanted to run, to get out, to be anywhere but there. He wanted to go home. To beg Lisa for forgiveness, to ask her if she still thought he was the same man she knew after everything that had happened. Most of all Waylon wanted to hug his boys, not the strange shadow creatures that lurked sinister in the corner of rooms. Watching him.

 

 _They tell me things_ , Waylon thought, _my god, they've been helping me the whole time._

 

To what end, he wondered.

 

“What do the pills do,” Waylon said, shutting his eyes.

 

The headache was getting worse, it was awful. Like an itch at the back of his skull he couldn't scratch that it would take flesh being torn apart to get at.

 

“Are you in any pain,” Eddie said, “discomfort?”

 

He was a bit too eager asking, Waylon thought.

 

“Yes,” Waylon bit out, “now tell me what the pills do.”

 

“I'll put on static,” Eddie said, fumbling for the tv remote, “it makes it feel less bad.”

 

It actually helped, the strange white snow on the screen.

 

 _Gospel of the Sand_ , thought Waylon.

 

That had been what the old man had called it, the one who thought he was a priest.

 

Father Martin.

 

“What do they do,” Waylon said, he was struggling to get anything out the pain was becoming so intense.

 

“Don't worry about that now,” Eddie said, “I'll let you have them back. After-”

 

“After what,” Waylon said, panic rising.

 

“After your pregnancy,” Eddie said.

 

It was an idea that was so unreal in concept it should have been automatically dismissed as one of Eddie's delusions but Waylon knew, just as he had known that the little bits of information whispered in his ear were facts, it was true. They couldn't use women so they had made something else. Something inside Waylon. Unbidden, letters burned behind his eyelids. Something he'd seen outside his room, white, sterilized and secure. Not like the other ones left to rot and decay. Because he wasn't one of the failures, he'd been...

 

WALRIDER II

 

But it hadn't been a controllable chaos, it had been a swarm. A thing waiting in the mountain to be born. Machines, magic, it was all the same. A living, breathing creature made of something immaterial. A wild paganism unleashed from the depths of the earth, animal and strong.

 

Protective of its parent.

 

“I understand that there's been some confusion, certain appearances you want to cling to. I know it's difficult for you to accept,” Eddie said, gently dabbing at Waylon's bleeding eyes with a kleenex, “not knowing who you really are. I can relate very much to that feeling. But I won't give up on you, I know you're worth it.”

 

Eddie stroked up and down Waylon's side in a way that was probably supposed to be comforting but was immeasurably creepy instead.

 

“My very own special girl,” Eddie said, “No one else in the world is quite like you. And I know I can be a bit vulgar, you know how a man can get when he wants to know a woman. But I promised I would try for you, for the children. True love forgives many short comings, don't you think? And darling, you have quite a few but I can overlook them for all you've given me.”

 

The world was a static sound. A white moss. A red boiling sea. The ice bag slipped from Waylon's neck, useless onto the floor.

 

“I want to go home,” Waylon said.

 

Eddie clung to Waylon, his arms wrapped tight around him. The embrace made Waylon's neck twinge, a testament to the strength of Eddie's delusions.

 

“We will,” Eddie said, soft breath against Waylon's ear, “I'll make one for us, I promise. Better than either of us has had before.”

 

The shadows faded into the floor and Waylon wanted to be sick. He wanted to scream, to shout, get Eddie to strangle him to death.

 

Perhaps that last one was hyperbole, Waylon had never been the type to roll over. Even when things had been absolutely the worst straight out of college and the dismal job market had nearly scuttled him, as a man and a professional, he still made it out. He'd still make it out of this. He had to.

 

Waylon struggled to his knees, the headache was fading. All that was left was a strange, slightly itchy ache.

 

“Easy,” Eddie said, helping him onto Waylon's own bed.

 

He certainly was solicitous after almost murdering him, Waylon thought bitterly.

 

Waylon put his head in his hands, the headache was gone but the crawling feeling remained like a bad taste he couldn't get rid of. It was pooling in the back of his head moving into his limbs. Waylon wondered if it had something to do with his neurotransmitters misfiring, he wasn't a neurologist but he had read a little bit about the technical details Murkoff had been trying to accomplish when he was building the command lines for the morphogenic machine. It felt a bit like bugs, whisper soft against his skin, spreading their strange sickness.

 

“Eddie,” Waylon murmured, a little panicked.

 

“Don't fight it,” Eddie said, eagerly, “just let it come onto you, like a wave at the ocean.”

 

 _He knows what's happening to me better than I do_ , Waylon thought, _he's been waiting for this._

 

That's when Waylon began to feel it come on like an alien hijack. He was aware of it this time, it wasn't a buried memory unleashed or some frantic imagining in the middle of a bloodbath. His face flushed hot to his ears, the way it used to when he'd embarrassed himself in front of Lisa's mother. The blood crawled down his spine into his limbs and built into a whirlpool that spread out to his stomach, imitating the pleasant flip flop he'd feel when he and Lisa could find a spare moment alone to make out on the couch.

 

But he wasn't living with Lisa in her family home, he wasn't twenty-two anymore. And Eddie wasn't nearly that sweet.

 

“Oh shit,” Waylon said, faintly, feeling the flush hit below his waist like a powerful punch.

 

“I can smell the blood pooling between your legs,” Eddie said, “that's how I found you before. And when I took you home, you were all affection.”

 

_It's a feeling at first more than a memory, the feeling of being tied down on an old mattress. Struggling until his aching blood stained legs were caught around a lumpy, patch work quilt. There's a shaving kit on the bedside table that looks like it came from the nineteen-forties with a slightly rusted straight razor and a bowl of water alarmingly red. He had seen his own face reflected in a small, pocket sized mirror on the table, frightened and pale._

 

_He was losing blood too quickly and far too much. Without the medication there was only one way to stop it but this variant, he was a bit different than the others. It wasn't the Walrider he was afraid of, it was something else._

 

_Eddie picked up the straight razor and hummed a tune that belonged in a barber shop a century ago and began carefully, painstakingly shaving the bit of remaining hair on Waylon's chest. It almost seemed like adding insult to injury after the surgery, the insertions and Andrew's sick attentions when he'd been under Murkoff's medical care._

 

“ _Just a snip,” Eddie had said, rapturously, “a small tuck. After I remove everything...vulgar. Then you'll be perfect.”_

 

_If only Waylon could poke a hole in the delusion but it was so strong, it was massive and all consuming. The lonely, lost boy. The lamprey who wanted to attach itself, to cling so desperately to the woman that abandoned him, that he hated because she wouldn't, couldn't love him after all his father had done to him. So he'd terrorized her relentlessly, until she had kicked him out. Forced him into the real world with all its ugliness and cruelty. And that final rejection, it had broken him apart._

 

_The facts wouldn't help Waylon now, only the delusion. If he could twist it, just a little he could survive this._

 

_After all, he knew this man like he knew all the others. In the blood dream he had found him frozen in terror, frightened by the truth. That Eddie Gluskin was alone because he'd done it to himself, even if he'd been convinced he was justified in taking something for his own pleasure when his entire life had been hell._

 

“ _Don't cut me,” Waylon had said, as the razor hovered over his genitals, “I'm not what you think I am.”_

 

“ _Now darling,” Eddie had said, “I know it's hard. And painful. And probably quite frightening but just think of our children and it will be quick-”_

 

“ _No, you don't understand,” Waylon had said, weakly, “look.”_

 

_Slowly, Waylon had spread his legs. He'd hated doing it but it was evident the blood slowly soaking the bed belonged to him. It was flooding everything with its copper, horrible odour. It was the same fluid that came from his eyes, Waylon wasn't entirely sure what it actually was. Burst membranes? Excess body fluids bled fresh from the pounding of his heart? There wasn't a whole lot of extra left inside his body after what he'd been through._

 

_It had certainly stayed Eddie's hands for a moment, it was as if he couldn't believe his eyes. But Waylon knew, he remembered, Eddie killed women because he wanted them which is why he had to make men into them first. Waylon's ruse would only go so far without something for Eddie to cling to, lamprey-like and vicious. Something special, just for himself._

 

“ _I can't stop the bleeding without you,” Waylon said, he had never seduced a man in his life but he tried, “I need you, I'll die without you. If you ha-have me, I'll never be able to leave. I'll get pregnant. We'll have to be married.”_

 

_Like music to Eddie's ears. He was instantly smitten but still understandably suspicious, Waylon looked like a man and they couldn't be trusted._

 

“ _Are you sure,” Eddie had said, all his hopes hanging by a thread, “that you aren't just making it up? That it's not an illusion? It can be hard to tell reality from fiction in this place.”_

 

_The absurdity of someone like Eddie saying such a thing wasn't lost on Waylon. He almost laughed out loud but managed to contain himself, it wouldn't be wise to provoke. Not right now._

 

“ _Kiss me,” Waylon had said, “then I'll get warm. I won't be able to say no, no matter what you do to me. And you'll see in a few hours just wh-who I really am.”_

 

_Eddie's gaze took on the look of a hungry man. It was worse than the cannibal, worse than poor Chris who had been so confused when he had found Waylon in the white room and nearly crushed Waylon's waist in his iron grip. More feral than even the Twins who had kept him like an animal, locked in chains beside them as they wandered in the fog looking for victims._

 

_The ropes Eddie had bound him with hadn't been removed from Waylon's wrists but it didn't matter, he torqued his body however was needed. Eddie had attacked him like an animal, licked his face and stuck his tongue in his mouth the way an unskilled teenager would. Grabbed his damp thighs and licked at the dried blood. And when he slid easily inside, Eddie was surprised when Waylon arched his back and begged him to go harder. Asked for nothing but his cock deeper inside.._

 

_And a few hours later when tied to a tilted wooden plank cushioned in shredded bedding and old, worn out towels, Waylon writhed and seized, bled and screamed while Eddie watched, captivated._

 

“ _My god,” Eddie had said, in blissful wonder, “what are you? A gift just for me? My own little girl...a darling bride-to-be.”_

 

_Seducing Eddie Gluskin had saved his life. Waylon had replaced one delusion with another a little closer to the truth._

 

_Blunt but effective._

 

Eddie said, his eyes dark with a terrible hunger, “you're my wife. You don't have to be shy anymore, afraid to ask your man to fulfill his husbandly duties. Just ask me, that's all it takes.”

 

Waylon took in a shuddering breath, his eyes dabbed with red. He hadn't wanted responsibility for any of this.

 

But he'd be dead without Eddie Gluskin, that much was for certain. Whatever kept him from bleeding out had something to do with whatever came from a variant's messed up physiology. And Waylon was twisted up like them but not like them at the same time. He was incomplete without their sexual attention, a broken machine.

 

“I need you,” Waylon said, feeling the hot, red tears slide down his face, “I'll die without you.”

 

Eddie smiled at him shyly, like the boy he was inside.

 

“You're starting to remember,” he said, reaching out for Waylon, “I'm so- so happy.”

 

The kiss was hard and rough, mostly teeth. Eddie's warm tongue in his mouth, the taste of his breath. The strange way he licked his jaw with frantic abandon was just like the first time.

 

Waylon thought, horrified, _I've already had sex with this man at least once._

 

The faded day had turned into a red twilight. The room was dim but not quite dark, Waylon was well aware of who was about to fuck him. And when he saw his own sweat damp thighs he understood why it didn't hurt. His legs were stained like a woman after birth or during a heavy menstruation.

 

“Tell me they were worthless,” Eddie demanded, sliding easily inside Waylon, “those other men. Or I'll leave you here, just as you are. Bleeding and empty.”

 

Pressed face down on the bed, Waylon groaned under him. Eddie was a huge man in every conceivable way, big thighs and arms with incredible strength. Waylon would do anything to keep the big man inside of him, including playing along with Eddie's sick, sexual games.

 

“Worthless,” Waylon managed, “they were just toys.”

 

His ability to make any sense at all was slipping but Eddie didn't seem to mind.

 

“They couldn't satisfy you because you're a whore,” Eddie hissed, “my whore. I made you my wife and you'll take it like a good slut. Until you learn your lesson, what it means to be my woman.”

 

It was not a gentle fuck but a rough slamming, unskilled and stuttering but that didn't matter to Waylon in the slightest. He felt himself opening like a membrane waiting to be pierced, like a fleshy hole made of blood and power and darkness.

 

“You're not allowed to forget this,” Eddie said, “you're not allowed to forget _us_ ever again!”

 

Eddie fucked him like a wild animal would and Waylon took it just the same, hungry and unsatisfied until he was loaded with enough cum to fill him up. His legs shook, he could barely stay on his knees. He collapsed onto the bed in his own, damp mess.

 

It had seemed like hours went by, time distorted through a haze of lust. He was shoved onto his side and mounted from behind, pushed halfway over the bed on his back until he could see the static on tv, shaking as he was penetrated, Eddie's loud grunts filling the room. Eddie avoided touching Waylon's penis but Waylon didn't need any help, his out of control body jerked and spasmed from orgasm after orgasm until it almost hurt.

 

“My little girl,” Eddie had said, as he leaned over him and licked the side of his face.

 

When the intensity had died down, Waylon collapsed on his back and half wrapped himself with a sheet. He felt blown apart, like he was coming down off a drug. Waylon had glanced over at Eddie through the sudden darkness that night had brought with it as the sun had set.

 

Eddie had tears in his eyes.

 

“You've made me the happiest man in the world,” Eddie said, rubbing his thumb across Waylon's bottom lip.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're confused about the ants I suggest reading The Murkoff Report, the official comic for Outlast with great art by The Black Frog. It's real good stuff and a great help to sort out unanswered questions in the games.

VI

 

If there had been a gun in the room, Waylon was unsure what exactly he would have done with it. Shoot himself? Not likely. He didn't want to die. Shoot Eddie? The idea was tempting but he wasn't a murderer. Not by nature. There was no gun in the room, only a man's soft breathing and Waylon's own distressed guilt.

 

As it was, he felt somewhere close to traumatized but not so far off the edge he couldn't think. It wasn't as though he were being doped up, it was his own damn body that was betraying him and that made the issue complicated. He hadn't even known he'd had it in him to be bisexual in the first place, even in a life or death situation.

 

If only a sexual identity crisis was the worst thing he was experiencing.

 

Eddie was sleeping rather soundly in the clean bed that didn't resemble a murder scene. He had tried to convince Waylon to sleep in bed next to him but there was no way, once the strange doped up feeling had worn off that he was crawling into bed with Eddie Gluskin.

 

“It doesn't matter,” Eddie had said, obviously annoyed, “we've already slept together before.”

 

“Fuck off,” Waylon had said through gritted teeth, wrapping the one clean sheet he had tighter around him.

 

It might have led to a harsher confrontation except Eddie was clearly feeling rather generous after their violent intercourse.

 

Lisa had teased him that after sex he was more malleable to her whims. Waylon didn't feel particularly like he had gained a leg up, as it were.

 

“Suit yourself,” Eddie had said.

 

The room was dark and it seemed more like a cavern filled with teeth to Waylon than anywhere approaching safety. Tomorrow they would be leaving, where to he wasn't sure. Murkoff hadn't followed them yet. The tracker had been left in a town that was still on the maps but held nothing but an abandoned gas station and a whole lot of tumbleweeds. Murkoff's technical team was limited, by the time they sorted out Waylon's little parting gift to the company they'd be long gone.

 

It was sad to think he wouldn't have gotten this far without Eddie Gluskin. It made Waylon sick to think of all the people Eddie must have killed. The terror they had experienced in their last moments with a man like Eddie looking down on them, saying horrible things.

 

If Waylon had _ever_ said words like that to Lisa under the pretense of romance she would have socked him in the face.

 

_I want to come home, Lisa._

 

Waylon drew his knees to his chest but winced when he felt an awful twinge. His body still ached like crazy and the wild fucking hadn't helped matters. He wanted his medication just to see what it would do, if it would improve anything but it had disappeared somewhere. Probably into one of Eddie's pockets. Waylon didn't dare search for it, not yet. He was fairly certain if he was caught at it being strangled to death would be the least of his concerns.

 

The weird shadows had returned toddling around the room like small children. Sitting on the chair pretending to type, like a strange parody of what Waylon had been doing the day before. Waylon felt a stab of fear; they seemed harmless but he still didn't understand what they were. Some part of him maybe or some part of somebody. Eddie hadn't been his only dick in that terrible place, the memories of the cannibal were awful enough. He didn't want to think there had been _others._

 

“What are you,” Waylon whispered quietly.

 

The four shadows walking around the room paused when a sudden noise made Waylon jump unexpectedly.

 

A soft dinging sounded from Waylon's stolen laptop. A little uneasy, Waylon cautiously made his way towards it. It was odd, he hadn't set up the laptop for any automatic e-mail but a notification had popped up on the desktop all the same.

 

Waylon hovered over opening it or leaving it be. It could have been a trick from Murkoff's team to try and suss out the IP that had wrecked their systems. None the less, it could also be important information sent to operatives they thought were still alive that would save them a lot of agony later.

  
Waylon clicked open. The e-mail address listed was entirely composed of numbers, symbols, things impossible to have in a standard address. Attached was an odd picture that loaded up slowly as if it were very high resolution.

 

“A swarm of...ants?” Waylon said, baffled.

 

Their small ghostly arms wrapped around his legs trying to keep him steady. But he could feel it, the pull. It was like he was being reverse gutted.

 

He let out a shout. He was falling into the floor, vanishing into nothing. Into the dark.

 

“Waylon.”

 

Nothing hurt, his body felt fine. He could see them there in all the voluminous red, the inmates of the Asylum. Where they should have been. The empty holes made him feel sad. So many shapes that had once been filled with data. The two identical empty forms made him feel saddest of all, they had been-

 

“Waylon.”

 

The call was so insistent it almost hurt.

 

“You look pretty fucking dazed down here,” the man said, “boy am I glad to see you still alive.”

 

“Miles?” Waylon said, he couldn't believe his eyes.

 

“Yep,” the low voice, the same rough face though he looked terrible.

 

Bloody, bruised up and missing fingers. Wearing the same clothes he had worn the day they had met.

 

“I can fix it,” Waylon said, “hold on.”

 

“It's ok,” Miles said, evidently nervous when Waylon approached him, “keep your hands to yourself.”

 

Why was everyone so afraid of him fixing things? He just wanted to make them better.

 

“I know it's hard to think about,” Miles said, “you probably don't remember much. I know I wouldn't want to.”

 

Waylon actually remembered in the blood dream but he didn't want to when he woke up. It would be too painful, too confusing. It wouldn't help.

 

“I'm here because some shit happened. It was an accident. I didn't mean to,” Miles said, “the Walrider just took over, I couldn't control- Waylon. Waylon! Pay attention. This is relevant to your situation. _Waylon!_ ”

 

Waylon's gaze had been diverted by a shambling, shuffling shape that was still alive in the dream, still flowing with data. It had moved just out of reach, he had wanted to chase it.

 

“Over here, for fuck's sake,” Miles said, frustrated.

 

It was difficult but Waylon turned his attention back to the man he had saved from certain death multiple times while in Mount Massive Asylum.

 

“Are you with that freak,” Miles said, “that guy from the basement. The groom.”

 

“The lost boy?” Waylon said.

 

“That's the last thing I'd call him,” Miles said, with a bitter twist to his mouth, “crazier than a shit house rat.”

 

“Uh-huh,” Waylon said.

 

“Stick with him,” Miles said, “I know it fucking sucks but trust me. Or you'll get sicker. They never finished what they were trying to do with the Walrider.”

 

Waylon watched the blood flow down from above them in beautiful swirling patterns, they made the emptiness seem less sad.

 

Miles said, “this is harder than I thought. What the hell did they give you to make you like this down here, a fucking morphine drip when they pumped you full of machines? Pay attention. This is important. Your family is safe. They'll be fine, they're all right. Peacock made sure. Don't go looking for them. Do you hear me Waylon? No matter how tempting. ”

 

“Why?” Waylon said, desperate longing clawing at him.

 

“Because,” Miles said, “if you go to them, you could kill them without even realizing it. Those things that follow you, they're not just part of you. They're part of it, too. Waylon. Waylon! For fuck's sake, come back here. There, stand right there. It'll see them as competition. It's like a god damn parody of what makes us human and it learned it all from you. Go figure the nicest, most innocent god damn person in that place would bring out the worst in something like that. For fuck's sake stay here! All those machines born from your blood and- ”

 

Miles mouth twisted in disgust.

 

“All those variants dumping their fucked up loads in you, they made it stronger,” Miles said, “sexual intercourse, reproductive techniques, they just want to be born. I had my doubts but I don't- I don't think they're just man made, if you catch my drift. It's like a new species or a very old one that was forgotten about until it woke up again. All those stories and fables, legends and tales about ghosts and demons. The files said as much.”

 

“You hacked Murkoff too?” Waylon said, impressed.

 

“No I didn't,” Miles snapped, “I hacked into your head. It's fucking weird, it's like your some kind of information hub. If they were still alive maybe...maybe all the variants could have done it if they tried hard enough. I don't know. Fuck man, get to someone who can do something for you. I nearly killed Peackock and I didn't even mean to. We got into an argument and the damn Walrider just reacted. He's practically in shambles and there's nothing I can do. I don't know what they did to you but it wasn't the same. You're not as bad as any of them or me, I mean, physically. I'm not a god damn scientist but there might be a way to reverse it. Make it better, clear up the bleeding, I don't know.”

 

“I could fix you,” Waylon said.

 

“Yeah, I don't think that means what you think it does,” Miles said.

 

“Don't be scared,” Waylon murmured, it was something someone else had told him in a very dark place.

 

It had been comforting.

 

“I'm not afraid of you,” Miles said, “it's those goddamn things.”

 

“They're just children,” Waylon said.

 

Gentle, child-like tugs against his legs. They were playful but they didn't care for the blood dream overly much, too much like their old home. They wanted to leave.

 

“Yeah,” Miles said, “the kids of you and like, a dozen fucking wack jobs. Great. Nothing to worry about here. Waylon, those things won't be content to be shadows forever and when they get it into their little fucked up heads to be something more, I don't know what you're going to be influenced to do. I couldn't stop it when the Walrider decided to jump start a swarm of ants and climb up a radio tower and it was a cluster fuck. All those people going nuts. Someone other than Murkoff might have noticed. That's why I'm here, I think- _for fuck's sake, pay attention!_ ”

 

Waylon turned his head back towards Miles Upshur, journalist. Walrider. Not a variant and therefore not as full of data to read.

 

“Waylon,” Miles said, emphatically, “get over-”

 

Miles was so stubborn. But Waylon knew he could fix him, he could fix the broken bits of the machine in the blood dream. He could move in an instant like a nightmare, with only his thoughts. Waylon punched into Miles chest.

 

“Fucking shit!” Miles said, doubled over.

 

Waylon could see just for a second a memory that wasn't his.

 

_The face is blurry and bloody, eyes wide and alarmed. Miles has his pulse checked by the stranger and then his neck. The man is wearing something like a long, white smock but it's cleaner than anything Miles has seen in this place, a perfect, pristine white. Except for the red x that's staining the crotch but Miles can't blame him for that. It looks painted on, like it had been put there by someone else._

 

“ _Th' Fuck are you,” Miles rasps out._

 

“ _I'm not gonna hurt you,” the man says, “I'm going to try and get you out.”_

 

_Miles had hit the ground so hard he can only gasp and gurgle, cracked ribs probably. He thought it was another deranged patient come to finish him off but this guy looks different, a little clearer in the eyes and a hell of a lot better looking than the inmates with all those growths all over them. Miles would have called this a face he could sell, someone wholesome to really drive home the sense of tragedy in a reader's mind._

 

_Granted, the blood that begins pouring from the man's eyes puts a bit of a damper on his front page appeal. The man clutches at himself as if in pain, gathers his strength. Wipes his face clean on his grimy hands. The red x was getting darker from inside the guy, it was growing bigger. The poor fucker was bleeding out. Not that there's anything Miles can do about that with the air knocked out of him laying on the floor, he can't even scream for help._

 

“ _Father Martin,” the voice is quiet and rough, like a man who hasn't spent much time talking, “I need you to look after him.”_

 

“ _Oh holy mother,” the man who comes into view is a priest only in the pits of hell, “you have given me an apostle.”_

 

_Rapturously the old man kisses the stranger's hand._

 

“ _Yeah,” the man says, sounding more than a little reluctant to answer to the title, “sure. You need to look after him, distract the other patients, especially the ones downstairs. I'll do what I can.”_

 

“ _Oh sweet merciful virgin, holy mother of god, your blessings I shall receive gratefully” father Martin is on his knees, pressing his face to the hand of the poor, geeky looking fucker and if Miles were in the position to laugh, he might from the sour expression on the guy's face as the withered lips of the nastiest priest he's ever seen press over and over against the stranger's flesh._

 

_When the stranger finally gets released from the creep, he leans over Miles to check his vitals again._

 

“ _You're going to be ok,” he says again, trying to sound reassuring, “just shock. I sent you that e-mail. I'm so sorry, I never thought this would happen. Follow father Martin, he'll try to get you out with the evidence.”_

 

_It's difficult to catch his breath, his ribs feel like they've exploded in his chest._

 

“ _S-stay,” he tries to gasp, he doesn't want to be in this hell pit alone._

 

_A friend means security. Someone he can throw to the nasty fuckers if they get too close._

 

“ _I can't,” Waylon looks agonized, “I need that medicine or I'll- it's hard to explain.”_

 

“ _Pretty wallflower,” a soft voice hisses, sing-song and grating, “he took the pills. The man downstairs. I saw him take them from the dead doctor. He wants to open you up good, make you purr_. _”_

 

_Miles vision blurs and his camera stutters. Soft, pained moans come from nearby and the gentle, shuffling footfalls of variants rustle past his ears. Miles makes sure to tilt his camera in the right direction, he's too stunned to focus but he can see the clear shapes in his viewfinder._

 

“ _Our mother,” they groan in ecstatic joy, “has come to save us.”_

 

_Save us...save us...save us..._

 

_Like an echo the litany goes on and on, many different voices all groaning the same thing._

 

_The handsome man in the white smock has the most uncomfortable look on his face as all the mutant paws grasp all over him. The variants are prostrate, on their knees, tearful with whatever passes for bliss in their fucked up realities._

 

“ _The mother knows us,” a voice whispers, “knows our secrets. Loves us. Loves us.”_

 

_A few of the variants pull out their genitals or rub them ecstatically against the leg of the unfortunate man. If Miles weren't about to pass out, he would have been sick at the sight of these hideous, mutated cretins trying to jerk off with their broken anatomies._

 

“ _I'm going to make sure they pay for what they've done to you,” the man's gentle voice breaks, a variant is pressing its face deliriously to the man's blood stained crotch, inhaling fitfully and he is understandably disturbed by it, “but you have to let me go. I need to get those pills or I'm not- not going to be useful to anyone.”_

 

_What the hell are these people?_

 

_But Miles has no time to worry about it. When he comes to again, they're all gone._

 

_There's only the blood messages on the walls to follow._

 

Waylon pulled out the bullets and held their silver casings in the palm of his hand.

 

Miles raised himself up a bit and deliriously looked at his hands. His fingers had grown back. He looked up at Waylon and his eyes widened in horrified surprise.

 

“Jesus christ,” Miles said, “that's what it meant. You're not just the second Walrider, you're the-”

 

With a gasp, Waylon woke up. He was laying in bed but the computer was in power saving mode, a soft red glow the only light in the room during early morning. It had just been a sinister nightmare, not real. Not a memory. At least that's what he had thought until he realized what he was holding onto.

 

Clutched in his fist were six silver coloured bullet casings.

 

Waylon crawled from his mussed bed quietly, carefully. His laptop suddenly sprung to life as though the track pad had been nudged. But there were no shadow forms, no children. The casings tapped loudly on the computer desk as they landed, like a testament to their unreal reality.

 

Focused on the centre of the screen was the e-mail with the strange attachment but the ants had changed. They were upside down.

 

_Miles, where are you?_

 

Waylon typed into the e-mail, hit send but he doubted he'd get anything but an automatic e-mail daemon telling him the address was void.

 

It was so mysterious and so strange. Waylon put his head in his hands, frustrated. Lisa had always told him he'd had an 'if-then-else' personality. Science that edged along the supernatural really wasn't his forte, there were too many unknowns. Too much uncertainty masquerading as hogwash. What was an illusion of the mind versus reality. That's what had intrigued him when the contract had come through for Murkoff. It had been an area that hadn't really been tapped by in depth scientific study before, beyond pseudoscience and vague philosophical meandering in speculative journals. It was almost poetic justice that he was where he was now since he had helped them do any of it, gave them their tools to torture and maim and tried to walk away. Like he hadn't played a role in the horrifying results of their experiment.

 

He'd genuinely thought Murkoff had been trying to help people, he'd been so stupid. Idiotically naïve.

 

The holes in the blood dream. The emptiness in Mile's words; _don't look for your family._ It all seemed so desolate and hopeless.

 

What the hell was he supposed to do now? Go to Mexico? Act the part of a married man trying to disappear for a while with his serial killer boyfriend? Sleep with Eddie just enough until he found a hospital equipped to help him? As absurd as his situation was, he wasn't laughing.

 

Clamping his hand over his mouth he tried not to make any noise when he began to cry. He just wanted to go home, back to his wife. Hold his children. He didn't want to deal with the aftermath of Murkoff's sick grasp at godhood. The tears that fell were still red, bright and thick like blood. Physical evidence he wasn't the same man who had walked into Mount Massive Asylum all those months ago.

 

“Darling?”

 

The sounds he tried to muffle must have woken Eddie up. He was so quiet, Waylon thought as he felt the slightly cool fingers touching the back of his sweat damp neck, no one would have ever heard Eddie coming for them.

 

“I suppose a good morning kiss is out of the question,” Eddie said wryly.

 

Waylon jumped up from his seat and wiped his eyes quickly. He felt a little vulnerable. He was only in a t-shirt and red undershorts and there Eddie stood in his briefs looking far more massive than Waylon could ever hope to be. The man could have crushed his skull in a fist fight and Waylon was pretty sure this had been the way Eddie had looked even before Murkoff got to him. Dead bodies were heavy, they required a lot of lifting.

 

_I don't want to think about this,_ Waylon thought frantically, _I don't want to know any of this shit._

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, grasping his own curly hair in his clenched hands, “what the hell are we doing? Where are we even going?”

 

“To Mexico,” Eddie said, “I know it's a bit different than probably where you're used to but it's not a bad country. Easy to fit in, pay off the right people to keep their mouths shut until we get settled. That journalist's jeep and all his cash will get us pretty far down there, we got lucky.”

 

“Miles Upshur is alive,” Waylon said, “I think. I don't know. I dreamed about him.”

 

Eddie took on the blank, far away look and Waylon finally realized what it actually was.

 

Shit, he thought, it was _jealousy._

 

“I saved his life,” Waylon said, awkwardly, “he owes me.”

 

“I think saw him once,” Eddie said, with a twist of his lip, “he was hiding in the back row of our wedding party. Homely man, a bit on the tall side. Dark hair and eyes, isn't that right Waylon?”

 

He didn't look homely to Waylon, just ordinary. But he wasn't about to correct a serial killer who thought Waylon was his wife and therefore his god damn property.

 

“I don't know,” Waylon said, “some of that I still don't remember very well. Probably the static or- radio waves. Or something.”

 

Or the residual horror of being kept by Eddie Gluskin in a filthy asylum basement.

 

“I'm still a little frustrated,” Eddie said, “that your memory only extends to certain facts that are conveniently about other people.”

 

“That's not true,” Waylon said, “I remembered that you took care of me.”

 

The heavy presence of impending violence in the room put Waylon on edge. He felt nervous, shaky. It wasn't helped when Eddie grabbed hold of his arms and hauled him close.

 

“That I did,” Eddie said, his eyes dark with threat, “and I loved you passionately as my fiancee, and love you still as my darling wife. I just want that affection returned. It's what _you_ owe _me_ for saving you and not some- some other man.”

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, trying to maintain a veneer of calm, “you're hurting my arm. And he's not the one keeping me from dying. I can't live without you. I mean that.”

 

Though it was said without the barest hint of romantic inflection Eddie seemed a bit more appeased after Waylon had said it. His grip relaxed slightly, the faded far away mask repealed.

 

“You were crying,” Eddie said, gently thumbing away the remains of the blood under Waylon's eyes.

 

Apparently this display of what Eddie considered feminine vulnerability was good enough to forgive the rest of Waylon's supposed trespasses. Eddie pulled him close in a hug that was more a mauling than anything approaching comfort.

 

_He has really big morning wood,_ Waylon thought with some despair.

 

“I hate,” Eddie said, “to think of you suffering without me, all alone. Just a kiss, that's all I ask. I know during daylight a woman's modesty is important to uphold but it's still dark right now. There's some time before we have to leave.”

 

How Eddie could think of Waylon as a woman with his rock hard dick pressing up against Waylon's obviously male package, was probably a testament to the strength of his delusions. Waylon squirmed when Eddie's mouth clamped on his and Eddie's tongue was thrust crudely into his mouth. Eddie was a very odd kisser and Waylon had suffered a few when he was dating in high school but nothing quite like him. It took every ounce of his willpower not to just try and break out of Eddie's vice like grip and try and spit out the litre of saliva it felt like Eddie was pushing down his throat with his tongue.

 

“My little girl,” Eddie said, and licked Waylon's jaw.

 

It was actually a little worrying to Waylon that he could easily have sprung an erection just from friction, or tongue fucking or whatever it was that Eddie thought represented mouth related courtship. When in the heat of his lust Eddie clearly hadn't cared what had been going on between Waylon's legs but when less riled up and more aware, Waylon wasn't sure how far that tolerance would go.

 

And the memory had been terrible enough, that horrible rusty razor poised above his crotch ready to maim.

 

But the kissing had suddenly been put on hold. Eddie's attention was focused on the small window beside his own bed that was the only view from their room to the parking lot.

 

“Get dressed,” Eddie said, “there's an unmarked truck circling. I think it left but I can't be sure.”

 

It immediately canceled whatever seduction Eddie had been planning and Waylon couldn't have been happier for the interruption, he just hoped it was a false alarm and not actually Murkoff.

 

After getting dressed, Waylon frantically crammed his things into a newly bought duffel bag. It was the colour red, he noticed. Maybe Eddie thought the colour looked good on him, appropriate considering how much he had been bleeding all over their room. Shoved inside were his meager toiletries and his stack of coding and notes and the stolen laptop. Waylon glanced at the window and didn't see a truck. It was however, strangely quiet. There weren't any other people in the parking lot, even the reception desk he could see just a bit from the corner looked dark like it had never been opened and it usually stayed lit all night.

 

“Get away from the window,” Eddie said sharply, hauling Waylon aside “bullets can break glass, we don't know who we're dealing with.”

 

And that's exactly what occurred in what seemed like a split second. The glass exploded and Waylon shouted, the blood hit his face first and spattered up the wall. A fine, sinister mist.

 

“Eddie!” Waylon shouted, as he watched him hit the floor.

 

“Fucking god!” Eddie said, grabbing his arm in pain.

 

Waylon felt the sharp bite first and then heard the bang. He thought he had been shot at first because of the excruciating agony but he could reach over his shoulder and pull it out.

 

He'd been hit with a dart.

 

_One hell of a sedative_ , Waylon thought.

 

He was collapsing almost as soon as he recognized what had hit him, sliding uncontrollably to the floor. Eddie was writhing in a corner of their room, swearing at the black clad team that came in wearing gas masks. A man in a pale, blue hazmat suit stood over Waylon.

 

“Waylon Park, I presume,” the man said, “Nice to meet you.”

 

Waylon tried to get off the carpeted floor, he tried to hit anyone. To escape. The floor was really dirty, he had bled a lot. Stuffed the red stained sheets under the bed and left a smear that looked like a body had been dragged. It would probably be stupid to start laughing at just how bizarre his life had become.

 

“Fucking jack booted PIGS!” Eddie shrieked, “Get away from my wife!”

 

“Oh, we're not with Wernicke,” the man in the suit said, “we're with the other one. His competition. Get Park in the armoured truck and lock the loud one up in the other vehicle. Get him medical when we arrive, looks like a graze. We might need him for a while with only two left. We're going for a ride in the helicopter, boys. Up, up in the sky.”

 

_Up to heaven, went away._

 

The variant in the water with the messed up face used to talk to him, had helped him through the Asylum sewers until he could reach the yard. Find the twins, his poet friends. Strange what he remembered when he was helplessly drugged. Waylon couldn't think, he could barely breathe he felt so heavy.

 

The world went out in a coloured smear, a wet red dream.

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

VII

 

The blood dream would have been a comfort. Instead when he woke up, Waylon felt the pain up his sides and the old bruises that had barely begun to heal, start to twinge. For a brief panicked second he thought he was back in the asylum under Andrew's care. But when his eyes flew open there was someone else sitting in front of him.

 

“Waylon Park,” the man said.

 

Someone moved behind him and he flinched as he saw the syringe pass his vision. He felt his shirt sleeve being adjusted and put back into place. At least he was still dressed.

 

“Stunning stuff isn't it,” the man said, “we worked on Murkoff's original sedative. Made sure it was strong enough to keep the big ones down. Wouldn't want a repeat of that big variant running amok.”

 

“Chris Walker,” Waylon said, blinking in the light, “was his name.”

 

“Ah,” the man said, flipping open a folder on his desk, “#136. Early study. Complete failure. What a damn waste. Sorry about the rough wake up, the serum hasn't been perfected. No one to test it on, no one quite like you anyway.”

 

Waylon strained against the straps keeping him pinned to the wheelchair. He still felt mildly drugged, like he had just woken up after pulling an all nighter. There were four armored guards in the room and at least several more outside, though Waylon could more hear the shuffling of their heavy bullet proof armor than see them.

 

“Where's Eddie,” Waylon asked.

 

“What would you do if I told you he was dead?” the man said.

 

There must have been a desperate look on his face because the man started to laugh, low and ugly.

 

“Don't fret,” the man said, “we know you need him to live. He's in a holding cell, you can see him later. He's asked about you quite a lot while we patched him up, wouldn't want to disappoint.”

 

“Who are you,” Waylon said.

 

He was tired of it, tired of all the scientists. And he'd never thought he'd say that in his line of work.

 

“Piquet is our public name,” the man said, “and you can call me Mr. Piquet if you'd like. We're French-Canadian, formed during the American interests in MKULTRA that crossed into the northern border. Of course, all European investors head our company and I assure you they're much more professional than the American sort. Not at all like that unfortunate Trager fellow.”

 

The man had a strange accent, it wasn't French sounding in the slightest but a mash of various other European nations. He had slicked back reddish hair that was graying at the edges and wore a plain, crisp black suit. Waylon was beginning to wake up enough to panic.

 

“You know about Trager,” Waylon said.

 

“We know about everything. Especially now,” Piquet said, producing Waylon's stolen laptop, “the Murkoff systems still in Mount Massive were an easy take once you had set those fires ablaze. You're very talented. Cum laude from Berkeley? You deserved better. Ridiculous the people at Murkoff put you through that nightmare when they could have just kidnapped your family to keep you quiet. We have the files, we have you. All we need is the first Walrider, the original super soldier.”

 

“Well I don't know where he is, so you're out of luck,” Waylon said.

 

“Yes you do,” Piquet smiled, “deep inside your mind. I suppose we'll just have to crack it open to find out. Marjorie, would you mind laying out those pictures?”

 

The woman stepped in from the hallway and stood next to Waylon. She wore plain black slacks, a rose coloured sweater and a white lab coat. She smiled at him, it reminded Waylon distinctly of Richard Trager before he had jammed a syringe in his neck. Waylon wondered if they knew about the women from Murkoff and what had happened to them.

 

“I can see the fear in your eyes. Wouldn’t want to hurt anyone innocent. Don't worry hun,” she said, pleasantly, “I don't have the type of plumbing you can mess with.”

 

She removed from her white, lab coat pocket a thick stack of old looking photographs.

 

“Put the smaller ones out first, let him get a look at them,” Piquet said.

 

The pictures were laid out in a precise row, there were eight of them. Each one was more horrifying, repulsive and vile to Waylon's sensibilities as a human being and as a father than before.

 

“What are these,” Waylon turned his head away after a few seconds, disgusted.

 

“Pictures,” the man said, “Eddie Gluskin's ugly past. That young man in the middle there is Gluskin. The other two are his father and Uncle. You can see what they're doing to him in that one, with the beer bottles-”

 

“Fucking christ!” Waylon shouted, “Stop it!”

 

It was every parent's worst nightmare. Waylon wasn't a violent man but if anyone had ever touched his child like that he would have taken a baseball bat to their face. And there had been Eddie's own family, the people who were supposed to protect him from the rest of the world, doing terrible things to their own child.

 

“Sick isn't it?” Piquet said.

 

There hadn't been a doubt in Waylon's mind that whatever had happened to Eddie Gluskin to make him into the man he was, had been something sexual. It wasn't the sort of speculation that took a psych degree to consider after witnessing the way he behaved in the bedroom. But that had been more than Waylon had ever wanted to see of Eddie Gluskin's nightmare childhood.

 

“Pick them up Marjorie,” the man said, “thank-you. Now, lay down the other ones.”

 

There were eight of them too but they were hand selected from a much larger pile.

 

“Take a look Waylon,” the man said, “don't worry, it's not as bad as the other ones.”

 

It might not have been as graphic and repulsive but it was just as horrible to look at. There were eight different women, all clearly young with different hairstyles, different skin tones. The exteriors may have appeared different but Waylon clearly saw a type in their luxury surroundings.

 

_Young, collegiate, live by themselves, into older men for their money and probably the sheer fun of it. Like to have a good time, no commitment. These weren't just murders, they screamed REVENGE against imagined slights. The power to exist without a guilty conscience. Enjoyment of sex._

 

There were pieces of them taken apart, sometimes beheaded. They had organs laying on their laps and blood in their hair that matched their red lipsticks.

 

Waylon looked away but not quite so fast, he knew what these were.

 

“Strangled to death in their own apartments and then mutilated,” the man said, “it's surprisingly rare to have that happen. I mean, the sheer audacity of a killer to sneak back in and slowly take apart their young, tragic bodies.”

 

“Why are you showing me this,” Waylon said.

 

He had seen enough horror and more than enough death in Mount Massive, he really hadn't needed another dose.

 

“They're Eddie's kills,” the man said, “you must have wondered exactly how he did and what. Well, here it is. These are only a small collection. There were twenty-two confirmed murders spanning over a decade with photographic evidence. But those are only the ones they found. All serial killers keep a tally and 'the groom' as your fellow inmates liked to call him, was prolific. At least, that's what his psychiatrists said. They said there was no way to know just how many had been killed but the specialists guessed, at least forty.”

 

The pictures were picked up by Marjorie and put back into her pocket.

 

“I don't know how you slept a single night next to him,” Marjorie said, “I would have kept one eye open the whole time.”

 

“Our Marjorie is a smart girl. Used to work for Murkoff too, until she jumped ship,” Piquet said, winking at her.

 

Marjorie smiled. She was very pretty but not really Eddie's type. Too much cruelty just beneath the surface, not enough innocence.

 

“How do you feel about Eddie Gluskin's fate now,” Piquet said, “you've reviewed the evidence, any court would have found him guilty despite his trauma and sentenced him to life in prison or even in some barbaric states, the death penalty. And yet, he was relegated to a mental institution. What kind of universe are we living in?”

 

“I thought a generally ambivalent one,” Waylon said, “but I've reconsidered since Murkoff.”

 

“How naïve,” Piquet said, “it's never been anything but brutal. In a merciful world the courts wouldn't have found Eddie Gluskin 'not guilty by reason of insanity' and sentenced him to life in a psychiatric institution. After all, twenty-two beautiful promising young women lost their lives, people who could have really made a difference. Not the broken piece of shit that was Eddie Gluskin. What happened was that there was cause enough for the defendant to suggest the trauma of Eddie Gluskin's abuse as a child gone public because of a leak to the media had caused undue harm. His mother sues, the trial takes forever and his sentencing suddenly changes in light of the circumstances. Maybe his childhood's revelation to the public did drive Eddie crazy in prison but here's something to think about. A man doesn't spend over ten years murdering young, healthy, rich college girls and not get caught when he's a raving maniac. That takes time and patience and sanity. Still think what Murkoff did to Eddie Gluskin was wrong?”

 

Waylon felt the tears run down his cheeks before he smelled the blood. There was something about the pictures; not in the contents which he had never seen before. But rather about the way they were laid out. Piquet was watching him, judging his reactions. Just what was he supposed to see? Whether their test subjects were rapists or murderers it was sick. They were all sick, all of them. Murkoff and Piquet and all the other scientists who had attempted the impossible and made it into the impossibly cruel.

 

_Lisa, I'm so sorry._

 

“It's not right to torture people with their own damn abuse,” Waylon bit out, “doesn't matter what they've done.”

 

Piquet put away the files in his desk drawer. He seemed satisfied, like a conclusion had been reached.

 

“Old Wernicke loved Frankenstein but I've always been more fond of another book. Have you ever read Bram Stoker's Dracula?” Piquet said.

 

“No,” Waylon said, cautiously, “but I know the story.”

 

“Those movies aren't like the book,” Piquet said, “in the novel, Lucy Westenra is only a vampire when she's asleep. She only kills when she's unconscious. Sound familiar?”

 

“No,” Waylon said.

 

“It should. The blood really is the life,” the man said, “roll him into the examination room after we're done here. I hope you have our special EEG ready?”

 

“I'm on it,” Marjorie said, “I'll be sure Marco is ready for what he's going to be dealing with too.”

 

“Park,” Piquet said, “you're working for me now, in a sense. The scans of your brain will help us find the Walrider, along with the tests. They'll be quite painful, I hope you're ready. Oh, and you're going to help us sort out the code for the morphogenic machine, when you aren't being raped by that sick bastard. If you so much as blink in a way that I find displeasing, I'll have you put down along with that fuck up masquerading as a man. Understood?”

 

“Fuck you,” Waylon spat.

 

“I like that he has spirit,” Piquet said, “means he'll live through the procedures. It's time.”

 

The armoured guards wheeled Waylon through extremely pristine, white hallways and down twisting white corridors that looked like they had never been touched. The white room that they wheeled him into was something cobbled into a laboratory and not built for it. Waylon had the distinct impression that he was in a lab facility that was far more mobile than Murkoff's set up in Mount Massive.

 

“It's a bit primitive,” Marjorie said, “but I've made do with worse. You should have seen the first assignment Murkoff gave me, way out in the Philippines. That place was shit, who would want to live there? Marco, I guess. His whole family is from that pit.”

 

“Disparaging my home country again, eh? If you weren't my wife, I might be offended.” Marco said, “The facilities weren't the best but you can't beat the scenery and the food. Marjorie, roll him over here. I want him hooked up to my machine first.”

 

He was a man about as tall as Waylon with dark hair, dark eyes and a distinct twitchiness Waylon associated with too much white powder to meet harsh deadlines. Unfortunately, the tech industry was full of tweakers and Waylon knew the signs pretty well.

 

The entire operation had the feel of a shady home brew corporation trying to bank on the vestiges of a failed enterprise. Limited staff, maximized profits, work everyone until they were almost dead and then skip away with the money on a project they didn't have to front with research and development.

 

Richard Trager would have loved it.

 

“Murkoff wasn't the best employer,” Marco said, “I empathize with your decision to rat them out. They like to throw bombs down mine shafts and wait for it to rain gold. But Marjorie and I prefer slow and steady exploration, recovery and making sure what we see is what we're getting.”

 

“That's right,” Marjorie said, “hold still Waylon. Can I call you Waylon? I think I will anyway. I'm sure Murkoff never explained what they were doing to you or perhaps, you were far too out of it to understand. Regardless, that morphogenic machine was a blunt little tool. I can see why they ultimately chose to use a different technique on you.”

 

The four armoured guards assisted Marco in strapping Waylon to a clean white gurney that was bolted to the floor next to the biggest computer Waylon had ever seen in his life, outside of textbooks written in the seventies. They wrapped his forehead in a strap and buckled in his arms and wrist. Waylon thought it was a bit much considering how doped up he still felt and the armored guards but he had a sinking feeling the restraints weren't about keeping him from escaping.

 

“How's the head?” Marjorie said.

 

“My head feels fine,” Waylon said, “the rest is a bit shit. There's no chance you can just- reverse this whole process, is there? I'm a bit worn out from nearly dying of blood loss every few days.”

 

Marjorie said, with a sigh, “Waylon, honey. I respect your specialty is in technology and not necessarily neurological processes or genetic therapy so I'll try to explain your current situation. Have you ever broken your favourite coffee mug? Annoying to super glue the whole thing back together and really, not much good for coffee anymore but if you're the sentimental type, it'll do. Now, imagine Murkoff broke their Waylon shaped coffee mug and then somehow glued it back together into a perfectly made tea cup. And then if you broke it again and tried to make it into a mug, well. That just wouldn't work.”

 

“I see,” Waylon said.

 

“There's not a specialist in the world,” Marjorie said, “who could help you.”

 

Waylon had the impression that Marjorie didn't lie about much, she liked it better that way, more horrifying to her patients. He was fucked.

 

“We're doing what layman's call 'shock therapy'” Marjorie said, “It's going to really hurt. Bite down on this plastic thing so you don't chew off your own tongue. It's ok if you scream, Marco has real steady hands. He'll make sure to get the readouts right. ”

 

It wasn't a lie either, the shock therapy hurt. Waylon twisted and writhed on the gurney the straps barely keeping him on it. His eyes rolled into his head the second time and he passed out from the pain. The shot to the neck woke him up and Marjorie smiled her shark tooth smile at him and flipped the switch again and again, while Marco hovered over him ready to wake him up with serum if he fainted. The last time Waylon didn't pass out, instead he screamed.

 

“That's it,” Marjorie said, excited, “emotional distress, physical trauma and enough raw electricity to make them appear. There they are.”

 

“What the fuck are those,” Marco said, “nanomachines?”

 

“A swarm of them,” Marjorie said, “several swarms. Small ones. Don't worry, they can't hurt us. Not yet.”

 

Waylon was practically unconscious but he could feel their nervous clamour, the children. They vanished in only a few minutes, fading into the floor.

 

Between Waylon's clamped down teeth he spat blood in an ugly, red arc. It landed at Marco's feet.

 

“I can't wait to see what happens when he gives birth to more,” Marco said.

 

“Let's get him ready to rest,” Marjorie said, “we'll do the transfusion tomorrow. Then the _real_ party begins.”

 

The plastic was taken out of his teeth and with no small amount of gratification, he coughed up blood when they tried to lean him over and nailed them both with a fine, red spray. They were lucky he hadn't lost control of his bowels, really. Coughing up blood was almost being kind.

 

“Get the boys to take him to his room,” Marjorie said, disgusted.

 

“You go with,” Marco said, “I'll be wiping up these white walls for the next year.”

 

Marjorie wasn't happy about it but she relented.

 

“You owe me,” Marjorie said.

 

“For the rest of my life,” Marco joked.

 

The armored guards wrestled with Waylon as he writhed and struggled to get out, to get anywhere. Away from the scientists who were going to torture him to death.

 

“In the chair, Waylon,” Marjorie said, “play nice. Don't get out your gun you nimrod, where the hell is he going to go? Two steps and he'll be on the floor. Now put that thing away and help me sit him up.”

 

They managed to force Waylon's legs into the stirrups and his arms strapped tight against the padded rests. He could barely keep his head up or his eyes focused. He kept seeing shapes like he had when he first woke up in Miles Upshur's stolen jeep.

 

_Andrew hovered over his face with an expression Waylon could only call hungry._

 

“ _How many times a day have you jizzed in a cup for me?” Andrew stroked along the inside of Waylon's nude thigh, “probably a lot more than you did with your pretty wife.”_

 

_The attentions of Andrew were nothing compared to what they'd done to him, the doctors in their long white coats. Knives had been brandished and Waylon had been cut open, sewn up and told his organs were in fact, still working even if it felt like they were trying to crawl out of his body. Even his face hurt and that was the one place they hadn't bothered to abuse._

 

_It took every scrap of self control to keep himself from screaming the moment he woke up every day but he wouldn't give these sick fucks anymore pleasure than they'd already taken. He thought of Lisa, he thought of his boys. He thought of the love he had shared in the home he had helped build after years of struggle with debt, his father's early death and his mother's distant, disapproval of his life choices. He knew he had a home and family waiting for him outside of the hell he was living through but it seemed very far away. He felt very alone._

 

_And that's when the first one appeared, a faint whisper against the white walls in the examination room. No more than the echo of a shadow._

 

“Keep the gun aimed at Ted Bundy,” Marjorie said, a hint of nervousness in her voice, “if he so much as sets a foot in the hall, kill him.”

 

“Our orders are to shoot to maim, not kill,” the man in the armor reminded her.

 

“I don't give a fuck,” Marjorie said, “you're not the one he'd come for if he got out. The boss is just being overly cautious, we have another variant just in case.”

 

_Another one?_

 

They rolled Waylon down a white hallway with many steel doors. It almost looked like an apartment complex but one that hadn't been entirely finished. The ceiling was open with all the wires exposed along with the steel and cement floors for the next level.

 

“Open the door slow,” Marjorie said.

 

The armored men took their time, unsurprisingly Eddie was waiting behind the door. He looked massive compared to the size of the door frame, fists clenched. But the expression of rage melted a little when he saw Waylon in the wheelchair behind the guards.

 

“Darling,” Eddie said, with a desperation that sounded totally sincere, “I was so worried.”

 

Eddie was wearing the same thing he had been wearing in their cheap, highway side inn but his shirt was half unbuttoned and Waylon could see white bandages underneath the open collar. There was also a bruise across his left cheek that Waylon thought looked like the butt of a gun. Apparently he hadn't been taken down peacefully.

 

“Get back,” the armored guard cocked his weapon.

 

Eddie quickly backed up, raising his hands.

 

“Push him onto the floor,” Marjorie said, discomfited, “then let's get the hell out of here. That guy gives me the creeps.”

 

Waylon was dumped unceremoniously onto the gray carpet and the steel door quickly shut behind him. He choked on the blood in his mouth and gasped like a fish out of water.

 

“It's all right,” Eddie said, “I've got you. Easy does it, that's it.”

 

The gentle way Eddie lifted him up from the floor reminded him of someone else.

 

Someone who had been kind.

 

_The grotesque creature that had once been a man shambled forward nervously. It was strange when a man that size was afraid. He had found Waylon collapsed at a computer monitor, trying to figure out how to open the security doors. The big man had carried him all the way to a dark, quiet room unsure of what to do. Rip his head off, or wait and see._

 

“ _I'm not the Walrider,” Waylon panted, dumped on a heap of crates, “it's okay.”_

 

_Chris Walker had been a nice man, he was still. Despite all the violence and pain he was still trying to do the right thing. If there had been any other choice, Waylon would have used it but he was desperate. He needed help or he'd bleed to death. He needed this man's murderous, confused attentions diverted away from him or he'd never be able to find a way out._

 

“ _Come here,” Waylon beckoned him, “I don't want to die and neither do you. I can help you.”_

 

_Waylon swallowed, he spread his blood damp legs._

 

“ _It won't be rape, I promise,” Waylon said._

 

_He knew about what Chris had seen on his tours in Afghanistan, all the violence and cruelty. They hadn't listened to orders and Chris had tried to fight for an indictment but the general had connections and his fellow soldiers, the good ones, didn't want to make waves. They didn't make much and their careers would have been sunk if the tables were turned on them. All those women...all those kids...dying in such terrible ways. And the torture Chris had to do, the men in the bombed out towns all looked alike. Tired and afraid, just like Chris had. Like his best friend, who's head was blown off by a grenade. He hadn't wanted to do any of it but those were the orders. Just like the orders those bastards had ignored, those damn whores who fucked up good, normal people because their skin was brown. He hated it. He hated the government and he hated, at the very last, himself for being that okay with it._

 

_But he hadn't been okay at all. He just hadn't realized it yet._

 

“ _Little pig,” Chris grunted._

 

_Waylon's shaking hands pulled down Chris' trousers just enough to unleash his enormous cock. It was a good thing Waylon had seen a few dicks before this one or he might be in trouble trying to take it inside of him._

 

“ _Easy,” Waylon said, “that's right. Come closer. Hold me by the waist.”_

 

_The fact was that Chris was an enormous man in every way and Waylon felt stretched, he felt used by such a massive tool. It felt good, even if Chris gripped his waist so hard it hurt. Waylon leaned back on the boxes and squirmed just a little to get the whole thing inside of him. When Chris used his massive legs to pump his cock into Waylon, it was like he was being pleasurably gutted._

 

_They were fucking not three feet away from a security guard with his head ripped off, blood still glittering in the dark. It was all red inside, all wet. Just like Waylon._

 

_It was like one long, horrible orgasm and Waylon couldn't stop his body from shaking and trembling around each thrust until he was almost in pain from too much pleasure. Chris fucked him hard and for a long time until he groaned, sounding like a desperate, dying man and filled Waylon up with a massive load of hot cum. The giant man collapsed on top of Waylon nearly crushing him, loud sounds coming from the open hole on his face that had once been his mouth._

 

“ _Chris,” Waylon said, reaching his blood stained hand out to touch the man's damp face, “I'm sorry.”_

 

_Chris was crying. Waylon couldn't fix the past but he could change the man who had lived it._

 

“ _Little pig,” Chris said, his white, empty eyes wet with relief, “my little whore.”_

 

“ _That's right,” Waylon encouraged, “you found me. And you can help me, I need my medicine or I'll get sick again.”_

 

_The massive gut felt warm and good resting his own well used body and Waylon let it happen, after they were done. Allowed the big guy to pick him up. Carry him deeper into Mount Massive, down into the tunnels._

 

It would have been too charitable towards Waylon's remaining lung capacity to suggest what came out of his mouth was a scream. More like an overwrought gasp.

 

Like an aftershock the images swirled in front of Waylon's eyes; demons with huge cocks, dancing fiends and flowers bleeding red as blood.

 

“I don't like talking to people who only hear what they want to.”

 

It was Miles again, in the blood dream. They were back to back and Waylon smelled smoke and the denim of Mile's jacket. Where Miles had gotten a cigarette in a dream was anyone's guess.

 

“What are you talking about?” Waylon said.

 

“I owe you, so I'll give you a hint. It took me three days to get into Mount Massive,” Miles said, “because I was investigating suspicious deaths related to the Murkoff corporation. I asked too many questions and they caught up to me. So I went there in my jeep with just about everything I could carry packed in the trunk. Just in case. And there you were to help me out, as soon as I was pushed through that damn glass walkway. I'm a pretty arrogant guy I admit but I learned what fear really was that fucking day.”

 

“I remember that,” Waylon said, “I saw it when I fixed you.”

 

“You're not really fixing anything,” Miles said, “if anything, you're making it worse. Murkoff takes too much out with their damn machine and doesn't put enough in. All you had to do was come along like a decanter full of water and just let loose. The variants loved you for it and provided you with a whole lot of raw material in return. What do you think you are? What the hell does that make you?”

 

Waylon wanted to turn around, to face Miles but he had a feeling that wasn't a good idea. There was something about him that was wrong, about Waylon's face. He touched his own cheekbones but they felt fine, he looked all right he had seen his own reflection in the mirror in the waking world. Nothing was missing there except his memories. Nothing was missing now...except some essential piece that would slot everything into place.

 

“I'm just a lone man who tried to do the right thing,” Waylon said, “what else should I have done? Get killed in that horrible place?”

 

“For fuck's sake,” Miles said, “you act like you're stoned while wandering down here. It's a little bit infuriating. What the hell is the point in talking if you can't hear what I'm saying?”

 

Maybe Waylon's brain had shut his body down because he couldn't handle it. Or perhaps there was something else he was afraid of, worse than being an active participant in his own rape.

 

“All I'm saying is at this rate,” Miles said, “when you do wake up from whatever this is, it's gonna get ugly.”

 

Shocked from the dream like a cold water bath, Waylon came to gasping and writhing on a mattress that had been laid on the carpeted floor.

 

“Ah, there she is,” Eddie said, “my little girl.”

 

Waylon tried to shuffle away from Eddie who was much too close and holding his arms. Rolling over onto his side was painful but Waylon endured it to loosen Eddie's grip on him.

 

“I was hopeful,” Eddie said, “that you'd remember after the terrible ordeal they put you through. But I suppose that's not the case.”

 

Eddie's disappointment was almost palpable but Waylon found it difficult to give a shit. Waylon clutched at his head, it hurt. Like the start of an itch.

 

“How's your arm,” Waylon asked, his throat hurt, he was so thirsty but he wasn't about to ask Eddie for a glass of water.

 

 _God, those pictures are still in my head_ , Waylon thought, _the terrible things his family did to him._

 

But Waylon knew having too much sympathy for Eddie Gluskin would only get himself killed. He had to separate his idea of the wounded man from the very real monster.

 

“It's doing all right,” Eddie said, pleased at having been asked, “it was difficult getting you off the floor with an injury, you're heavier than you look. Those sick jack booted fucks just left you there to writhe in agony without me but that's their modus operandi, isn't it? The one we both know so well.”

 

Some terrible thing clawed at the edges of Waylon's head, it felt imminent. Like something terrible had already happened and there was only the aftermath to endure.

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, clutching his head, “how are we going to get out of this?”

 

Eddie scooted closer to Waylon and began petting his curls. It was extremely discomfiting but Waylon was in too much pain to bother making him stop. Even his eyes hurt in a throbbing distant agony.

 

“When I was a boy,” Eddie said, “I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to be when I grew up. After doing so well in shop class in high school, I decided to go into carpentry. I was eventually employed by a contracting company that put up luxury condominiums, apartment complexes that kind of thing.”

 

Waylon felt a shiver of something go through him. Perhaps it was recognition of Eddie's crimes or what the police had probably taken years to discover. Eddie's victims had lived in the complexes he had built, he had known how to get to them. How to come back, how to get in and out. If he thought too much more about it, he'd be sick again.

 

“It was the best job I ever had, very nice folks. Good hours and decent pay. But the one thing I disliked was that it wasn't really a place that encouraged creativity. The plans for these things are all bought off the market, very cookie cutter. Or else they couldn't put them up so fast.”

 

Eddie leaned closer to Waylon and whispered in his ear.

 

“Do you know what we're in? It's an unfinished residential complex. I can see from our window all the way outside to the abandoned 'for sale' signs. The housing crash hit and these disgusting jack booted fucks moved in,” Eddie said, “but won't they be surprised. I've built this one before, I have an idea how to get us out. It'll only take a few days, if you help me.”

 

Waylon blinked, feeling the hot redness slide down his face. Eddie carefully dabbed at the blood with a towel he had procured from who knows where.

 

“I'll help,” Waylon said, “just tell me what to do.”

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit starts to hit the fan, sorry this took so long. The story has expanded well beyond my initial word count during editing. Enjoy!

VIII

 

When Waylon could stand without collapsing, Eddie guided him towards the window. It was a grim, tinted gray lending everything an air of unreality. It suited Waylon's strange dreams. It also seemed thick and was probably bullet proof, near impossible to shatter. It was fitted into the window in a way that seemed shoddy, though if Waylon asked he was sure Eddie could tell him more about the particulars.

 

He didn't ask.

 

“Look at that,” Eddie said, pointing towards the trees in the distance.

 

When the wind blew, a weathered 'for sale' sign flapped heavy from the shrubs. The sign was in both english and french and Waylon suddenly had an epiphany.

 

“I think we're in Quebec,” Waylon said, “I was there once, for a technical conference. How long was I out?”

 

“We flew in,” Eddie said, “but they clocked me good so I have no idea which route we took. Do they speak French in Canada? I've never been there, only as far as Vermont.”

 

What Eddie had been doing in the land of forests and bleak redneck hunting grounds Waylon didn't want to know.

 

“Some parts,” Waylon said, “and everything looks colder, we're definitely further north. It doesn't seem European, we're not in Paris.”

 

“I always thought Paris would be a romantic place for a honeymoon,” Eddie said, stroking down the side of Waylon's neck.

 

Eddie's hand rested against his nape and Waylon seized up, the memory of being strangled a little too close to the feeling of gently being touched. The blank look was on Eddie's face again, barely suppressed violence. Jealousy. Lust. It was like Eddie was drinking in Waylon's fear every time he touched him, devouring it like nourishment. Eddie pressed the tip of his thumb softly against Waylon's adam's apple, as if he could make it disappear.

 

Waylon swallowed, “so how's any of this help us get out of this place?”

 

“I'll show you,” Eddie said.

 

The room they had been dumped in had been refitted into a makeshift prison cell but based on the layout Waylon assumed it was actually just a large bachelor apartment. The living area had a recessed corner where their mattress was, along with their heaped personal effects from the inn (curious that they had thrown those inside with them, it raised alarm bells in Waylon that lead towards notions of easy disposal) and the kitchen area was close to the front door. They went into the bathroom. There was a very tough looking mirror under plexiglass, difficult to shatter.

 

“Under the cabinets is a structural flaw” Eddie said, “I hate these kinds of places, budget apartments and half assed workmanship but the extra fittings to keep people contained, seemed cheap. Like it's just been set up in a hurry. There's no cameras, no two way mirrors, audio recording, nothing.”

 

“They're going to kill us,” Waylon said.

 

“Probably,” Eddie said, “but it also means they don't really know what either of us can do. Gives us a bit of an advantage.”

 

“You're strong but I don't think even you can punch through bullet proof glass,” Waylon reminded him, “or reinforced cement walls.”

 

“That may be true,” Eddie said, “but that's where you come in. The cabinet opens up into duct work which means behind these walls is a lot of empty space. I'm a bit too large to fit through but your girlish figure should squeeze in just fine.”

 

Waylon was a little bit offended. He was a grown man, hardly minuscule.

 

“But even these people wouldn't overlook someone digging through the walls in these little rooms, it'll have to be slow,” Eddie said, “I just don't know exactly how much time we have until they start shooting at us with something other than darts.”

 

“They're trying to use me to find the Walrider,” Waylon said, “something's been going on out there. I don't know what it is but it just doesn't feel right. I was- was warned that some terrible event happened. Something that lead these people right to us.”

 

“They already had their super soldier in the Walrider,” Eddie said, his eyes darkening, “they made you into something else, something they think they can use.”

 

“I'm still me,” Waylon said, “just a bit...traumatized. And when we get out, far away from these damn scientists I'm-”

 

Perhaps it was the crushing realization that it might not happen the way Waylon had wanted, his happy reunion, his expression must have been telling because Eddie reached out. Waylon darted backwards, he didn't want comfort from a serial killer.

 

“What's wrong darling? Do you think you're going to just leave here and go back to your family, like nothing ever happened?” Eddie said.

 

It sounded like a rhetorical question and that made Waylon angry.

 

“My wife isn't going to turn me away because I have problems,” Waylon said, “I just don't know if it's safe to be around her. Or my boys.”

 

If that meant the rest of his life was spent with them at arms distance, that would be all right, he'd do anything to see them again. Behind glass, metal or wood, it didn't matter.

 

“I don't like competing,” Eddie said, “especially not with people who aren't here.”

 

Waylon laughed, the sound was bitter.

 

“She's my wife,” Waylon said, “there's no competition.”

 

Sometimes Waylon thought, he forgot essential things about human behavior that really screwed him over later. But who could blame him, his formative college years were spent around people who could memorize the division of pi to the eight hundredth number but couldn't match their socks. Lisa had thought that was just part of his charm, the man she loved. The acerbic computer geek turned loving father.

 

Eddie wasn't quite so forgiving. He lashed out, gripping Waylon by the shoulders so tight, Waylon could feel his muscle shifting under his fingers. Waylon let out a pained noise but that didn't stop Eddie from hauling him close, their faces almost touching.

 

“I suppose when you feel the urge,” Eddie said, the intensity of his eyes was alarming, “you'll just make do? Who knows what would happen if you slept with a woman now, you might rot them out from the inside. Kill them instantly. Might put a damper on your glorious return to the life you knew. She's not like you, she's just like all those other whores, the sluts who didn't know better.”

 

“Shut up!” Waylon shouted, “don't you dare say that about my wife!”

 

It had been a fear at the back of Waylon's mind made worse by Marjorie's assurance that he was doomed forever to a tormented half-life. To whatever Murkoff had left behind. Terrible to have it spoken aloud and worse still to imagine that it was the truth.

 

“She loves me- she-,” Waylon felt the shift.

 

The darkness hovering around him. The abyss that opened up, lamprey-like and wide. Christ, it was right in front of him and all around like a shadow closing in.

 

“Waylon,” Eddie said, it was almost a gentle sound, calling back to him.

 

Waylon's arms shook in Eddie's grip like a wild vibration that trembled through the rest of his body. Perhaps he had overtaxed himself after the shock therapy but the clarity that returned wasn't about any of that.

 

“I forget things,” Waylon said, “and it's not just from when we were in the Asylum. I can't remember the entire night we spent at the inn. I don't remember where the receptionist went, she wasn't there. The office wasn't open in the morning.”

 

“Good,” Eddie said, the most excited Waylon had ever heard him, “keep going. What else?”

 

On the carpet underneath their bed while they stayed at the inn there had been a lot of sheets rolled up, stained with blood. Only it hadn't entirely been made of sheets and pillows, it hadn't all been Waylon's own grotesque discharge. It had been something else. With eyes like glass looking out from the shadows, as Waylon had fallen to the carpet with a dart in his back.

 

“Oh god,” Waylon said, “Eddie. What the hell did yo-”

 

He hadn't.

 

Waylon shook uncontrollably, he was going to faint.

 

“No running this time,” Eddie said.

 

The slap was hard but effective. Eddie kept Waylon stable in his grip, grabbed his neck and held him stiff. There was no passing out now, only acceptance.

 

“What else,” Eddie encouraged.

 

Waylon's voice was choked on his own distress, it was a wrecked burble that came out of his throat.

 

“That night,” Waylon said, “I went to the reception desk. I wanted a chocolate bar, I was hungry.”

 

If the road hadn't been so bleak, the one he had to follow, he might have been able to do it. To show Lisa that he was still the same person. It didn't seem possible anymore.

 

“You would have been,” Eddie said, “since you didn't eat any of the food I brought.”

 

He hadn't even thought about it, just thought he was sick from remembering the cannibal's force feeding.

 

“But that wasn't what I really wanted,” Waylon said, “so I leaned over the counter and-”

 

Waylon closed his eyes, trying to block it out. The sounds and smells, the screams.

 

“There wasn't anything to ki-kill with,” Waylon said, feeling ill, “so I just ripped at her face. And broke open her head on the desk.”

 

“You were thirsty,” Eddie said, “I was a little derelict, I admit, in my husbandly duties. I had no idea you would just wander off by yourself into the night. Nearly gave me a heart attack when I found the room empty. I thought Murkoff had taken you away from me. But then I found you and your little snack. I just had to close the place up after that, who knew when that old geezer would come looking for a treat.”

 

_All the things I did for you..._

 

“You didn't even eat them,” Eddie said, as if simply bemused by it all,“it's the strangest thing I've ever seen. You just squeeze the necks like oranges.”

 

It was like remembering a nightmare because it was so distorted, full of pain. Waylon recalled the tunnels and the wet floor under him, his eyes rolling up into his head uncontrollably. They were like seizures and the longer he went without the blood and the sex, the worse they became and the more he bled until every step he was wracked with agony. The buzzing from the mountain had sent everything critical. Waylon could barely remember his name. Until escape from the sewers led him to a lucky break. He stumbled across Eddie's room full of failures, the bad wives, the ones he wanted to remember fondly but still neglect.

 

It had been after the cannibal, long after the twins but before Chris. Wandering the halls and hiding, terrified and frightened and confused beyond anything he'd ever felt before. As a desperate attempt to save himself, Waylon had climbed up into a duct. There he had waited until he was starving, nearly in agony from hunger. Eventually, Waylon had noticed a smell on the air, it seemed the basement had been occupied by a killer. Eddie would bring his victims there to string them up or throw in a severed head that hadn't made the cut for the mannequins. And Waylon would creep down from his hiding place once Eddie had left and drink whatever he could. They had existed as a parasitic relationship for at least a day without Eddie suspecting a thing.

 

Until Waylon had almost gotten caught. Eddie had noticed that there was a sudden interloper into his domain, the necks on the heads he decorated his gallery with had been squashed and rudely broken. Waylon had scrambled away into the shaft. Had fallen down a long, terrible hole and hurt his leg. And that was how Eddie had found him, limping and covered in stolen blood not far from the place he had been hanging his ex-wives.

 

It hadn't been the cannibalism Waylon had objected to when he had been hauled around by Frank Manera, it had been the solids.

 

“I murdered people,” Waylon said, as red tears slipped down his face, “I don't even remember how many.”

 

The fondness Eddie felt for his urges was evident.

 

“You're not a murderer, you're just a sweet young lamb,” Eddie said, “so helpless. Couldn't even bring yourself to kill to eat, at first. But goodness, you learned fast.”

 

Waylon wasn't the lamb, he was the lamprey. The one in his own damn nightmares. He'd simply attached himself to the biggest sturgeon he could find.

 

Eddie said, “I have a sneaking suspicion the machines put inside you aren't working very well, if you had to keep doing that.”

 

“My medication,” Waylon said, then immediately crushed his eyes shut, pained by his own reality.

 

He knew the truth now. Or rather, he knew some of it.

 

“Does nothing,” Eddie said, “it was something you got into your head. So I stole some from a medical man and made sure my wife would be happy. It's all you talked about for ages but I can't blame you for that after what those jack booted fucks put you through.”

 

And there it was, the practical consideration Waylon hadn't been thinking about but really should have been. Eddie _lied_. It was what he did. To himself or to other people. Waylon laughed and slumped down to the floor. He put his head in his hands and grabbed at his hair so hard it was painful.

 

“Is _anything_ real?” Waylon gasped.

 

“I don't know who you've been talking to when you're asleep,” Eddie said, “but I'd be very suspicious. It's a strange place, the blood dream. And I've only been there once.”

 

Waylon looked up at Eddie's face, it flickered fear just for an instant.

 

“And while there, the only person I ever met that made any sense was you,” Eddie said.

 

There was some significance in the statement, Waylon could feel it beating through him like stolen blood. All the death he had caused and he could still barely remember it. But there was something to it, they had all said...all the variants...

 

_I saw you in the blood dream._

 

What the hell was it, even? An Actual place? A realm inside his psyche?

 

He had always fancied himself an out of the box thinker but this was way outside of anything he'd ever been through. His sense of self, his sense of purpose was called into question. And his family...

 

_I want to go home, Lisa. But I'm not sure if I can...not yet._

 

“What else?” Waylon said, “for fuck's sake if there's anything else just tell me!”

 

“I don't think so,” Eddie said, “who knows what might pop into that pretty little head in the meantime. Something important, maybe.”

 

“Then tell me what you're so afraid of,” Waylon snapped, “is it me? Or something worse.”

 

Quick as a flash Eddie had Waylon around the throat with one hand. It wasn't hard, almost kind compared to the other times but Waylon still felt the pressure in his grip. The thinly veiled threat.

 

“A woman must know her place,” Eddie said, “and my purpose as your loving husband is to remind you. Don't push it, darling.”

 

For the first time in a long while, Waylon felt less afraid. Eddie didn't actually want to kill him, he just wanted to beat the shit out of him and fuck him like the girls he never could in his perverted fantasies. It was almost understandable, less intimidating. He acted the way he looked, like a greaser hooligan from the nineteen-fifties.

 

“I'm not your wife,” Waylon said, “I'm someone else's husband.”

 

It was easily the stupidest thing Waylon had said, a sure lead in to some kind of violence. But the reaction was not what Waylon expected.

 

Eddie smiled at him a little wistful, a little bit sad.

 

“We'll see how that pans out,” Eddie said, and let him go.

 

It made Waylon's stomach do a back flip.

 

_What the hell else does he know that I don't?_

 

Nothing on earth would stop him from going home to his wife and sons, as long as Waylon was still alive to escape.

 

“Why don't you check the fridge?” Eddie said, “I'm sure there's something interesting in there. I have to do some real work, tap some walls and see how we're getting out.”

 

Waylon wanted to throw something at Eddie, get into a fist fight (which would probably end badly, considering) but instead he did what he was told. He opened the fridge, knowing something else would be in there. Some other clue.

 

There were unmarked, white containers in a neat, tidy stack. Waylon pulled one from the refrigerator and could already smell what it was filled with.

 

“Jesus,” Waylon said, feeling sick.

 

Human blood.

 

The container trembled in Waylon's hand but he was so thirsty, his throat was dry. Eddie was methodically tapping the walls with his two fingers, barely paying attention. For some reason, Waylon didn't want anyone around to watch. It was perhaps because it represented a rapidly dwindling sense of self, as red as the streaks he would leave behind when he was finished drinking.

 

“In the sink,” Eddie said, when Waylon tried to dart across the room, “keep the mess to yourself this time.”

 

Clearly Eddie was still sore about Waylon's assertions of his personal identity but that wasn't his problem right now. Waylon rushed into the bathroom, slamming the door closed behind him. He set the container on the edge of the sink and took in a deep breathe. The man that looked back at him from the mirror was still recognizable as himself, even with the red tear tracks streaking his cheeks. The obvious visible stress from his experiences, the tired and worn out slump to his back. He yanked some toilet paper from the holder and dabbed at his eyes.

 

“Ouch,” Waylon said, wincing.

 

After dampening with some water and rubbing more gently, it looked like some sort of scab had opened up right under his bottom eyelids, like a worn out tear track very old dogs had. It was red and irritated and looked like it was spreading itself just a bit to the tissue underneath.

 

“Fuck,” Waylon said.

 

He supposed it was only a matter of time before whatever hormone treatments Murkoff had given him had some kind of visible negative effect, beyond his inability to grow a beard. Waylon recalled hearing the doctors talk about rapid growth, irritation and excessive mucous membranes having to be removed from some of their patients. Things being cut off that were important. It wasn't encouraging to think about.

 

There was nothing he could do about it regardless, best to put it out of his mind. Waylon closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. He ripped open the cover of the white container and warily observed the dark, liquid contents. Blood was only really bright red when it was fresh, outside the body it quickly darkened into something close to the colour of red wine than bright, horror movie crimson. It was beautiful, it was everything. Waylon felt the hunger come over him in a way he could hardly describe.

 

He drank it messily, quickly. In several large gulps. The container was licked as clean as he could get it. It wasn't enough, it wasn't the same, it wasn't drinking from someone who had been living. Waylon shook all over and trembling violently glanced up at his face in the mirror. It was spattered in blood, wild looking and animal. He was shocked by what he saw, shocked by what he had become.

 

“I don’t want to do this,” Waylon said, shuddering, “I don’t want to be this.”

 

He wanted Lisa, he wanted his family. Awkward beers and a barbecue with their new neighbours, arguments about the kids and if they should get a dog or not. Not months of hell at the hands of Murkoff and a terrible fate when Piquet was tired of him and decided he was worth more in parts than a functioning whole.

 

Some dreadful sense of doom was growing in Waylon's mind, some notion that he'd never be free again. That there wasn't anywhere to turn to.

 

In the mirror he could see the scars forming under his red rimmed eyes and he wondered, what else was hiding in his head. What other horrible memories was he pushing deep inside, trying to deny happened? They were drifting out in small floods, like running blood.

 

_Above the knees, below the navel,_  
_Sliced and sewn on Gluskin's table._  
_To make a place to push inside,_  
_The Groom will make himself-_

 

_The sound of a typewriter, cold and hard in the darkness. The feeling of being followed. The sensation of being carried above, to the chapel._

 

“ _We can bring 'em to the happy couple,” the voice is willowy and strange, a southern hick, fish out of water, “the bride and groom. A weddin' present.”_

 

_Who knew the flood would actually happen? A watery downpour from the showers into the basement and Waylon knew who was responsible, he had helped him. Wanted him to escape with the footage. What Waylon had done before he had realized-_

 

_He wanted Lisa to forgive him. Maybe make things right even if he never made it out._

 

_The sound of pen on paper, Waylon could see the writer this time. Just a man like him, lost inside a nightmare. Sitting at a worn out table by a power switch, working his way through what he'd experienced._

 

“ _Jesus,” Miles said, scrambling to his feet, “you snuck up on me. I thought you were dead.”_

 

“ _What are you writing?” Waylon asked, his words slurred and thick._

 

“ _Nothing important,” Miles said, “Waylon. Waylon! Can you hear me? Jesus this place gets to people. Screws with their head. Waylon come on, I'm here for you cause you wrote to me. Remember? And I came because of someone else too, your wife-”_

 

_All the darkness Waylon was fighting against bled behind his eyes. The stuff that was beginning to pour out of his body like ink in the shape of children. It made him hungry._

 

“ _Run,” Waylon had said, voice breaking and eyes closed against the coming night, “run away. Get out of this awful place.”_

 

“ _You gotta come with me,” Miles insisted, “with two of us, it'll be easier.”_

 

_The sounds from below were getting louder, were they gun shots? Screams. Banging. A thunderous calamity._

 

“ _I can't,” Waylon said._

 

“ _Why not? Jesus, come ON! I can hear some kinda bullshit going on outside,” Miles insisted._

 

_The worst was that Waylon felt he could never leave. That there was nothing outside but an endless, soul crushing darkness, that he should give up already. Burn with..he could feel his eyes rolling into the back of his head, his body trembling._

 

“ _I'm so hungry,” Waylon said._

 

_It was the only warning he could give before he lunged._

 

Familiar but unfamiliar, great flashes and images, sensations and feelings. The smell of smoke. Blood and blood and blood...

 

_It felt like a crack in the skull that was growing, splitting apart._

 

_He sat in the library with the pictures spread out on the table. There was blood on his hands. He'd hurt himself with a broken window shard and wrapped up his hand so he could keep filming. He was trying to make things right, trying to..._

 

Waylon let out a horrible noise, somewhere between a scream and a wail. He wanted to go home. Be with his boys, hold Lisa again. Waylon let himself fall apart, allowed a controlled collapse before he scraped together what remained of himself and his dignity.

 

“Darling?”

 

The voice on the other side of the door wasn't a comfort. Waylon quickly wiped at his face with damp toilet paper, over and over. It hurt. It almost felt good. A sensation he could quantify and understand. Real and physical.

 

“It's open,” Waylon said, after a few minutes.

 

He could hear Eddie breathing in the silence, he had been leaning up against the door. Probably listening to Waylon's suffering while imagining all the sick ways he could comfort him later.

 

“I heard you,” Eddie said, “screaming.”

 

It was an odd thing to hear Eddie a little unnerved.

 

Waylon said, leaning on the counter, “probably heard that a lot back at the Asylum.”

 

Glancing at the mirror Eddie looked a bit frustrated, although about what exactly, Waylon couldn't fathom.

 

“It's an ugly sound,” Eddie said, “un-lady like.”

 

Waylon looked up at the plexiglass mirror and saw Eddie's gaze turn curious.

 

“Hold still,” Eddie said, excited.

 

He had Waylon gripped hard around the wrist and hauled him sideways.

 

“Wait,” Waylon said, “stop! That hurts!”

 

Using his body weight to press Waylon against the counter top, Eddie used his legs to pin Waylon down and grab his chin with one hand. The bruises were twinged, Waylon still felt the burn in his legs. It really hurt.

 

“The skin under your eyes,” Eddie said, “it's splitting.”

 

It was an uncomfortable position and not one that made Waylon feel particularly safe.

 

“Have they,” Waylon swallowed, dread rising, “done that before?”

 

Eddie loved to lie but what he loved most of all, was keeping secrets.

 

He smiled at Waylon, the shy lost boy restored.

 

“When we were married,” Eddie said.

 

There was something to what he said, some horrible memory flapping at the edges of Waylon's waking brain like a carrion crow over a carcass. But all he could remember was Eddie's face wreathed in orange light. Like the sunrise.

 

Like the chapel in flames.

 

“Was there,” Waylon said, “a fire?”

 

“Two of them,” Eddie said, his tongue flicked out to lick his lips, “but we were only together for one.”

 

It's an area that is completely dark in Waylon's mind but another recollection replaces it. He might not be able to remember whatever wedding Eddie insisted had happened but he can now recall the build up.

 

_The sound of a sewing machine. Being chained to a mattress painstakingly bent over a chair. He's in the craft room with Eddie who is some feet away, working from machine to machine._

 

“ _I have your measurements corrected now darling,” Eddie said, cheerfully, “and after this, we almost have a dress.”_

 

_There is someone lurking in the shadowy space between doorways, someone with a blinking red eye. The chains were loose, Waylon struggled against them. The eye reminded him that he needed to escape, to leave, to get out..._

 

“ _Oops,” Eddie said, “I better give you a bit more, just in case.”_

 

_The needle is clean and new but what's inside of it was something scrounged from doctor's rooms and blood soaked pharmacies upstairs. A nice mix of chemical restraints, probably a strong enough mixture to put down an elephant. Waylon barely feels the pin prick until the relief hits, the pain and anguish fading away into a dull acceptance of his captivity._

 

“ _Can't have you running off on me again,” Eddie said,“it nearly cost us both, last time.”_

 

_The split lip Eddie was sporting had been earned in a fight with a very nasty variant, someone Waylon wasn't too upset to see the back of. There were only so many he could save, so many that he could influence._

 

“ _My hero,” Waylon said, thickly._

 

_Eddie smiled at him, bashful. He was handsome like that, more like what he had been outside. A handsome groom looking for his perfect bride. But perfection in human beings was impossible, it was no wonder he was so disappointed._

 

“ _My sweet girl,” Eddie said and leaned over for a sloppy kiss._

 

_It was much easier enduring Eddie's roving tongue on drugs, Waylon even leaned into it. The heat and warmth a comfort when he felt so unraveled from the inside._

 

“ _Ahem,” the voice is strange, unnatural, “I have something for you, Mr. Groom.”_

 

_Eddie sighed against Waylon's lips, annoyed at the interruption._

 

“ _I told you not to surprise me, Dennis,” Eddie said, in a threatening tone, “one more time-”_

 

“ _This here is important,” the voice is young, cringing, “this here is something you'd- you'd be well to remember us for. Next time you go a huntin'. Consider it an early weddin' present.”_

 

_Some nervous fear ticks at the back of Waylon's head, that no good can come of this. Waylon knows this man, knows all of them. This is dissociative Dennis. The lodger upstairs. The one who warned him about the flood that would be coming, any day now._

 

“ _Here then,” Eddie said, gesturing at a nearby table, “and get out of here. I don't want to catch you again, it's rude to spy on a man and his wife in their own home.”_

 

“ _Hear that? Shame of my loins. My little possums won't bother ya anymore,” the voice changed into an old man just as the smack of papers hitting the table echoed in the craft room._

 

“ _What is this,” Eddie demanded from Dennis._

 

“ _It's the files, sir,” Dennis said, “the ones on your wife. I heard that man talking, the one who tried to take him away. The blinker with the eye. The water maker. And I followed him, caught him by surprise.”_

 

_Eddie didn't have much patience for Dennis, today was no exception._

 

“ _What the hell is that supposed to mean,” Eddie said, “you're not a very sensible person, Dennis. I don't know why I should be courteous to interlopers when they can't return the favor.”_

 

“ _Sir,” the voice was cringing and youthful, “it's the files on Waylon Park. The whistleblower. The one you got there, strapped up. Your bride, Mr. Groom. It's all his- er, her secrets.”_

 

_Eddie looked at the manila folder in his hands and then towards Waylon, triumph in his eyes._

 

“ _All of them?” Eddie asked, breathless._

 

“ _Every one,” Dennis said, “the water maker, the eye blinker he flung it at me when I frightened him. I gave him a real good scare, sent him packing. I think he was looking for your bride, Mr. groom might want to keep a close eye on her. That rascal could still be lookin' to poach.”_

 

“ _This makes the street two-way, doesn't it darling,” Eddie said, “thank-you Dennis. Go on home and don't let me catch you down here again anytime soon.”_

 

“ _Yes sir,” Dennis said, “no, sir!”_

 

_Eddie laughed and twirled around his workroom, flipping the files up and down between his hands in glorious celebration. He leaned in close to Waylon, their noses nearly touching._

 

“ _It's only fair that a man know his wife's family,” Eddie said,”understands her past sins better than she does. After all, this place can show things to you, can't it? And you- my darling one, my precious little girl, are filled with secrets.”_

 

_Eddie's breath was so warm and Waylon couldn't help but lean towards him._

 

“ _Ah, ah,” Eddie said, a playful grin on his face, “not yet. Let's see here, Waylon Park. Hmm, not a very feminine name is it? But I guess it does have a certain uniqueness to it, names that start with a 'w' are uncommon. And what's this, all these pictures. Is that your wife? Pretty girl. And this one, oh my. Not so pretty like that, is she? She looks angry, like someone betrayed her. Did you betray your family, Waylon? Maybe you weren't so happy after all.”_

 

_Waylon jerked in his restraints, it was wrong. This was wrong._

 

“ _The drugs are wearing off maybe I went a bit light with the dose,” Eddie said, humming slightly, “but I don't think you have it in you to run away just yet. And what are these, your children? Oh and here's a picture of the happy family together...”_

 

_A dark bitterness crossed over Eddie's face._

 

_Eddie said, with a far away gaze, “maybe you just weren't good enough for them.”_

 

_The pictures fluttered to the ground and Waylon desperately wanted to gather them up, cradle them close. Have them again to make himself believe...._

 

“ _I suppose it doesn't really matter now,” Eddie said, his previous cheer restored, “because darling, I've got everything about you right here. And I can tell the rest of this stuff, will be very educational.”_

 

_Desperately Waylon wanted to gather up the pictures, to rip out of his restraints and run. Eddie cupped Waylon's face in one hand and held it taught._

 

“ _Time for another dose,” he said._

 

_The syringe was fresh and the drugs were strong, much stronger than before. The rest of the evening was a blur, only Eddie's giddiness remained tactile, like a torture to endure. Eddie's heavy body pinned down Waylon on their shared bed. He was caught around the throat and called a whore, a slut. Fucked until he saw stars, the muscles in his groin burning from clenching so hard as he came multiple times, helplessly feeling pleasure until it hurt._

 

_With his head positioned halfway across the mattress Waylon could see the blinking red eye upside down. The water maker, the rain bringer._

 

“ _He'll bring the flood on us, won't he?” Dennis had said, “Water can wear through anything.”_

 

_Waylon had just made sure Dennis' prediction had come true._

 

_A different time and a different place. Even with his camcorder held so high next to his face Miles looked forlorn behind a curtain of fire._

 

“ _Get away,” Waylon said, “run away.”_

 

“ _You fucking idiot,” Miles said, “like I'm leaving you to die now. I brought your friend. That guy, the one from upstairs. You just hold on, he'll be here soon. There's bullshit going on down there, real fucking horse shit. Between the three of us, we'll get out. All the way out. I know it.”_

 

_When Miles had walked through the flames unharmed, Waylon knew something was very wrong. The dark shadow from the basement trailed behind; he knew this one's name. What he had once been. The nice boy, the one the variants all befriended. Their little brother._

 

“ _Billy?” Waylon said._

 

“ _Naw,” Miles said, “just me. Don't you want to show the world the evidence, Waylon? Got to stay alive to do it. We'll tell the whole fucking world what they did.”_

 

_Waylon could feel it, a dark presence. The thing from the mountain, the ones that longed to be born. What the flames had promised escape from. It was there, behind him, beside them. Inside of him. There was no escape, only death promised anything anymore. He was something more than Billy could have ever hoped to be but he didn't want it. He'd never wanted that kind of power._

 

_When he saw the Walrider, Waylon screamed._

 


	9. Chapter 9

IX

 

In the bathroom, Waylon had begun to shake so hard he could barely stand. He navigated his way to the mattress on the floor with Eddie following behind. Waylon sat down with his knees close to his chin and bleakly considered what he had recalled. Eddie sat down next to him, an eager look on his face.

 

“You saved me,” Waylon said flatly, “from the fire.”

 

“Finally,” Eddie said, almost preening, “you've remembered something useful.”

 

“And drugged me,” Waylon said.

 

“I had good reasons,” Eddie said, leaning close to Waylon, “it was hard to keep you from running off all the time.”

 

“Where was I running to,” Waylon said.

 

“Where do you think,” Eddie said, sighing softly against Waylon's shoulder, “but all that's over with now.”

 

“I'm not suicidal,” Waylon said sharply, “I wouldn't have tried anything like that without some really awful motivation.”

 

Eddie said, “it's not like you were having a bad day at the office.”

 

“No,” Waylon said, swallowing thickly, “I'd never. Not even if I were enduring just- nothing but the worst suffering. I'd still try to get out. I'd still try to get my family back-”

 

Waylon shuddered.

 

Back from what? The worst, most extraordinary fear bubbled up Waylon's throat.

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, “tell me what's in the file. I know you had it, Dennis gave it to you.”

 

“No,” Eddie said, nestling against Waylon's shoulder, “not now. When we're out-”

 

“If we get out,” Waylon said.

 

“We're going to get out,” Eddie said, with such absolute certainty that Waylon knew, without question, that Eddie knew something more than he was letting on.

 

“Who are these people,” Waylon said.

 

“I don't know,” Eddie said, “Murkoff's competitors?”

 

He was clearly playing dumb. Waylon closed his eyes, he was in over his head. He couldn't trust himself, he couldn't trust anybody. He couldn't even trust his own senses and his eyes wouldn't stop hurting. He rubbed at them.

 

“Ah-ah,” Eddie said, grabbing his wrists, “if it itches, try not to scratch. You might accidentally rip something out. Goodness knows, I've seen people do it before.”

 

The itch that had begun at the back of Waylon's head was only getting worse, it felt like it was spreading. Terrifying to think that the hot wet heat would start soon and Waylon would be helpless.

 

“Father Martin burned to death,” Waylon said.

 

“I suppose he did,” Eddie said.

 

“All the other variants, they're dead,” Waylon said, “there's only you now.”

 

“Yep,” Eddie said.

 

“That's a lie,” Waylon said, “there's one more. Somewhere in here.”

 

“There could be,” Eddie said, “but I doubt he'd be useful for much if they caught him that easily.”

 

“Is anything you say ever the truth?” Waylon said.

 

“What would you like me to say?” Eddie said, “Yes? I doubt you'd believe me anyway.”

 

Never had Waylon ever wanted to hit someone so badly but he knew for a fact that Eddie hit back a hell of a lot harder.

 

“What the hell else are you so desperate for me to remember,” Waylon said, “maybe it's not that important if you can't be bothered to tell me.”

 

The terrible feeling was back, the lust and burning and something else. The dark red bleed before Waylon's temperature rose just a few notches, enough for a flush to creep into his neck and face. Before all he could do was spread his legs and hope Eddie was in the mood.

 

“Nice try,” Eddie said, with a wry smile, “but I'm not telling you anything until you remember it yourself. Wouldn't want to hurt that pretty noggin' of yours anymore than it has been.”

 

“What was my patient number,” Waylon said, “can you at least tell me that?”

 

“Sure,” Eddie said, “#2536, at least, that's what the file said.”

 

Waylon jumped up from the mattress and made his way to the small nook that held the laptop Piquet had left in the room for Waylon to use.

 

All the files were almost the same, copied from Waylon's stolen laptop he had been using in the inn. A massive info dump to be sorted out later, not encouraging to Waylon's sense of their longevity as captives. Waylon used the code to make all files visible and sifted through them until he saw the long list of patient numbers and finally, after what felt like an eternity of scanning them for the right one, realized his number was missing.

 

“It's not here,” Waylon said, “Eddie.”

 

Panic rose like an ugly, grim wave.

 

“Did you make that up?” Waylon said.

 

“No I didn't,” Eddie said, “if it's not there maybe someone made it disappear. They might have had good reason.”

 

“Did you fucking delete my number?” Waylon demanded, “The files, did you get rid of them?”

 

His temper was frayed, he hurt, he could feel the burning heat rising. And he was seriously tired of recalling and enduring his own sexual abuse.

 

Eddie laughed, it was utterly infuriating. Almost mocking.

 

“Why would I do that,” Eddie said, “besides, I'm great with AutoCAD but that hardly helps me sort out a Murkoff issued laptop with its own in house operating system. Maybe some bugs got into it, ever think of that? A little bug from a little friend of yours...”

 

“Miles?” Waylon said.

 

But there was something wrong with Miles, he wasn't necessarily a friend. Waylon actually had doubts that was, in fact, who he was talking to in his dream. If it was even the blood dream at all, everything might have been an elaborate hallucination. He certainly felt unhinged enough, like something was looming closer. Some awful, unforgivable truth.

 

_Lisa, where are you now?_

 

“Why are you doing this,” Waylon closed his eyes, in agony, “what the hell is the point? Stop _lying_ to me!”

 

The sound of slight discomfort Eddie made when he got up from the mattress reminded Waylon that he was in fact an injured man in various ways. Perhaps he ought to try and be a little nicer. Lisa had always told him (especially when she was annoyed with his bluntness) that honey attracted more flies than vinegar.

 

The momentary sympathy was quickly dispelled when Waylon felt himself being pulled away from the computer in a rapid, painful motion. Eddie looked grim, like something out of a nightmare. His face frozen, calculating and cold. It didn't matter that he almost looked like a normal person, there was clearly something horrifyingly wrong inside and Waylon was just smart enough and unlucky enough to have learned firsthand what that was.

 

“There's nothing I'd like more than to tell you everything and watch you come apart back to how you were,” Eddie said, “my sweet, beloved cowering wife. So full of shame and guilt and misery you'd do anything for me. But I understand why things have to be the way they are for a little while. It's clear as the blood that comes from the bloated sack of flesh inside of you. I can't wait to see your face when you find out the truth.”

 

“Find out what,” Waylon said, through gritted teeth, “I'm not afraid of you.”

 

Eddie laughed, “Even now you're blocking out anything that upsets the delicate balance in that pretty little head. Why don't you leave the thinking to the real men, darling? Might hurt yourself if you wander down too many winding paths. Goodness knows you certainly found enough trouble before I made an honest woman of you but I understood the risks of marrying a reformed whore.”

 

The way Eddie twisted the word _whore_ as he spoke made Waylon sick inside. It was so insidious and demeaning, like nothing could have been worse.

 

“I saw you before you were my wife,” Eddie said, “from a third floor window. Out in the yard with those two men. You took both of them at once, it was...crudely done. They were so mad when I stole you back they wanted revenge. But in the end, I won. Remember that. You owe your life to me and my respect doesn't come cheap.”

 

_Respect._ What a joke. As if Eddie respected anybody, like he'd given a shit about anyone before in his life besides himself.

 

“I didn't ask to be rescued,” Waylon said.

 

“That may be true,” Eddie admitted, “but I did rescue you all the same. And we got out together.”

 

Waylon closed his eyes, pained.

 

The fire in the chapel returned with staggering clarity. Being carried by a man, big ones. Being handed over to another, their faces in the dim glow, grim and determined. They had missing teeth, odd jaws. Their bodies were nude and hairy and their cocks uncircumcised and large. They had wanted to burn and had taken Waylon with them to meet Father Martin. They were supposed to die there together.

 

_The only way out is the truth,_ Father Martin had said.

 

Waylon wondered what the hell he had been going through that he would want to suffer the most painful death imaginable to make it all end. Even all the horrors he was enduring in the present wouldn't have made him take that route. Something was missing, pieces lost again to the dark where Waylon's memories should be. They were becoming more unnerving the more he recalled. After all, how much further could he go without completely losing whatever remained of his sanity?

 

“What exactly happened to Jeremy Blair,” Waylon said.

 

It seemed essential. Like there was a piece of a puzzle dangling from his corpse.

 

“He was killed by the Walrider,” Eddie said, “I saw it happen myself. Torn to pieces from the inside, blood and guts spraying everywhere. Terrible sight.”

 

The blood that had been all over Waylon when he had regained consciousness in the jeep had likely belonged to his ex-boss. How strangely comforting. But...there was a possibility that his assumption was entirely wrong. He couldn't trust anyone anymore.

 

“Where's the-” Waylon swallowed down his fear, “where's the Walrider?”

 

Eddie said, “I don't know.”

 

He was lying.

 

“For fuck's sake,” Waylon said.

 

“It's a good thing I have no idea,” Eddie said, “imagine if Piquet knew about that. Then we'd really be screwed.”

 

“We're screwed anyway,” Waylon said.

 

“For a while,” Eddie said, “have another drink. It might help loosen you up. I think you're feeling a bit uptight from all this excitement.”

 

“It's not liquor,” Waylon snapped, “it's human blood!”

 

“All the more reason to not let it go to waste,” Eddie said.

 

The gentle tug on Waylon's right ear made him flinch. It hurt. Maybe there was a scab growing there too and everything he had done to try and escape Murkoff, get away from Eddie, go home to his family would be meaningless because he'd die from too much human growth hormone ending up in the wrong place.

 

“I'm not suicidal,” Waylon said.

 

Maybe it was the fear talking or maybe Waylon wanted to be sure Eddie didn't get the wrong idea about his attachment to living. He reached out and grabbed Eddie's arm and was reminded in a very physical way that Eddie was much larger, stronger and more terrifying than Waylon could ever hope to be. It brought back strange flickering memories of holding onto Eddie's arm for deal life, clinging to him in an elevator. The sounds of bullets and screaming thundering around them.

 

“Corporate cops,” Waylon mumbled.

 

The way Eddie looked at him was alarming. Like open, desperate longing.

 

“I'll get you something,” Eddie said, “who knows what they'll try to do you tomorrow, better keep up your strength.”

 

Maybe it was just the bleak red hunger still gnawing at him but he agreed.

 

Another cup pulled from the fridge by Eddie, another flood of images Waylon didn't want to see. The terrified face of a security guard as he had lunged, the man had gotten away but not far. The others had come rabbling like madmen, as starved for violence as Waylon was for blood. They'd let him drink from that one for a price, a go a piece. Their mutant, fucked up faces contorted in ecstasy would haunt Waylon's nightmares he was sure of it.

 

“Did you drink,” Waylon asked, leaned over the freshly stained kitchenette sink, “I mean, alcohol.”

 

The stains on the steel looked like the blood soaked fingerprints Waylon had seen on the medicine bottle. At least they weren't as illusory.

 

“I used to like the occasional beer after work,” Eddie said, “I could use one now but I somehow doubt a good lager is tucked away in the freezer.”

 

Waylon snorted, he was probably right.

 

“What did you drink,” Eddie said, “if you did.”

 

The touch on his back was almost jarring, unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. Eddie leaned over him like an iron curtain, false safety. Waylon felt his head start to spin, the itch and burning heat crawling up his spine like an unwelcome guest.

 

“I wasn't much of a drinker,” Waylon said, “but if I had to pick, it would be jager shooters. Straight up.”

 

Eddie laughed, “the purest form of social lubricant.”

 

“Yeah,” Waylon said, “it didn't really help much there but it kept me warm in winter, while everyone else was having a good time.”

 

The memories from his life before Lisa were bleak; being alone a lot as a teenager with his PC in his room chief among them. He had excelled in scholastic achievements but came up a little short on friends which he would learn, counted a lot more towards success in university than high school. Guys from the engineering club had dragged him out to the bars frequently trying to get him laid but the girls there just reminded him of his mother, who had spent her last year on American soil piss loaded just about every day. Miserable from the early death of Waylon's father and disappointment in her son almost a palpable presence every time they met, dampening their relationship until like a candle smothered it just went out. She'd left for Europe to join Waylon's much more successful sister in her luxury home on Crete. It was a mixed blessing, they'd never come together again as a family after his father's death, not really. And Waylon had never felt like he had been much of a fit for them, either. But the abandonment sometimes, had stung.

 

Because Waylon hadn't fit in anywhere, really. Until he met a friend who became his wife and suddenly found himself in her social circle of art students, engineers, english majors and ex-financiers turned marketing gurus. An odd bunch but it suited them. She was so at ease, so friendly. Everyone had loved her. She could have had anyone she wanted but she had picked him.

 

_And she still loves you_ _even if you're sick_ , Waylon reminded himself, _Lisa, I'm going to make it home no matter what. I've fought too long to give up now. I just hope you'll forgive what I've done._

 

The sink was red and stained with blood. Waylon could see the drain spiraling down into the dark and feel a shiver moving through him. He'd been gangbanged by madmen, he drank blood to stay alive, how much worse could it get? He'd already reached the division of everything by zero. There was no infinitely large number in the depths of his mind to unfold, only a sense of unending loneliness.

 

“What are you thinking about?” Eddie asked, “You've gone quiet.”

 

“Motherhood,” Waylon said, because it was as close to the truth as he was willing to get.

 

The hungry look from Eddie again.

 

“And how do you feel about it now?” Eddie asked.

 

“Terrified,” Waylon said.

 

The blood had an effect on his physiology. It was something Waylon realized a little bit too late to refuse enough to keep it from happening. It was beginning to overwhelm him, the warm hot burn spreading through to the tips of his fingers. Eddie's eagerness to get him more of it should have been his first clue.

 

“What does it do,” Waylon said, already feeling a hint of hysteria crawling under his skin, “tell me. Is the blood the medicine for real? Do I even really need it? Was it a lie I made up to comfort myself?”

 

Waylon flinched when Eddie reached out and pressed a blood smeared thumb down his cheek, he knew he wasn't making any sense. And regardless, Eddie always lied. He could remember it now, the terror he had felt in Eddie's gallery. Watching, waiting from the grate for the next bride to be thrown in.

 

It was probably the only truth he could count on; he wouldn't have done it otherwise. He needed the blood to live.

 

“ _The Walrider II host isn't functioning perfectly yet,” the doctor said._

 

_The cold feeling of a gurney and a red IV bag slowly dripping into his arm. Delirious and drugged, he couldn't even open his eyes. He could only hear their voices and the shuffle of their white coats as they leaned closer to him, examining his body._

 

“ _I don't think we can solve this problem without seriously compromising the health of the patient,” another doctor replied, “we may be stuck with intravenous plasma feeding indefinitely. I think it's worth it, what about you?”_

 

“ _We'll upgrade from plasma to blood, see if stabilization occurs more readily. Besides that, it's imperfect,” the doctor said, “but look at the results. PPM's are off the charts and he's never even been in the machine. I've never seen anything like this, makes Billy Hope's progress look like a geriatric limp. Even old Wernicke wouldn't know what to do with these readings. And the way it's affecting the variants is exactly what we predicted, the host may be imperfect but Walrider II is poetry. This is the scope of deity, not human beings.”_

 

“ _They don't exactly see him as a man,” the doctor said, “but they hate the 'd' word.”_

 

“ _Well, he sure as hell isn't human anymore,” the other doctor said, with a chuckle, “more like human 2.0.”_

 

“ _If that's the future of mankind,” the doctor said, “count me out.”_

 

“That's more like the girl I know,” Eddie said.

 

It was like Waylon had built walls around them and now they were trickling out, the memories he didn't want to keep. Every drop of blood broke a little more and chipped away at his defenses. The trauma that was evident but had felt emotionally distant suddenly crashed through his worn bricks and bad workmanship. Just like how Eddie was going to chip their way out and how the hell was Waylon so sure that they would make it? It was as certain in his head at this moment as his name. As strong as the guilt he felt eating away at him but- for what?

 

“I know you know,” Waylon said, sluggishly, “what did I do? It wasn't just killing people, was it?”

 

“You didn't do anything wrong,” Eddie said, smirk growing, “be a good girl and come to bed.”

 

_They lied to you._

 

The words were in deep, grim voices. Smooth and sensual, calm and at ease in a way that Waylon had envied because he hadn't been at ease when they'd met him.

 

He didn't want to remember this. He didn't want to-

 

_Look at the pictures. See? We're telling the truth._

 

Waylon on hands and knees. Two nude men on either side. He looked at the photos. He cried. Hysterical almost. Pictures on a desk covered in broken glass. The photos laid out in front of him were of-

 

He didn't want to remember. He refused.

 

The glass had cut his hands as he picked up and then he had tried to un-see what he had seen. Undo it all. It hadn't really worked, it had only hurt like hell.

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, body shaking.

 

Since when had he decided that Eddie Gluskin was a safe man to cling to? Waylon's knees had hit the ground and he pressed his cheek to Eddie's thigh. The images burst in front of his eyes; demons with big cocks, multitudes of bleeding flowers and spread butterflies. His eyes hurt, bleeding fresh from the wounds he knew he should have but somehow didn't.

 

“My god,” Waylon said, muffled by the side of Eddie's trousers, “I cut myself with glass. Why aren't they still there? You stitched them up didn't you?”

 

But that didn't make sense, surely Waylon would have had scars beyond the very slight bumps developing under his eyelids. If it had happened so recently there would still be a cut, stitched up or not.

 

“Shh,” Eddie said, brushing through Waylon's curly hair, “don't worry. I'm here.”

 

The strangest recollection popped into Waylon's head; Eddie didn't like blowjobs. They reminded him of bad things. But he certainly loved Waylon on his knees, weak and begging.

 

“ _It hurts, doesn't it?” Eddie said, with an air of satisfaction._

 

_Waylon's cheeks burned, under his eyes hurt. He wasn't insane enough to try to dig out his eyes, he'd only cut them underneath. As if that would have given him any relief from the sick feeling in his stomach, swirling with guilt._

 

“ _Yes,” Waylon said, as his voice had trembled._

 

“ _That's what happens when you run away,” Eddie had said, “now hold still, we'll be sure they look pretty for the wedding.”_

 

_Gentle, careful stitches. Measured as an expert does. So neat and tidy they were almost artful, even Waylon could appreciate the way they crisscrossed across his chalk pale skin-_

 

_Burning flames and smoke in his nose, it had died down into a smolder. Waylon can remember his hesitation, tremulous steps through the old staff boarding house while looking at the chapel. His leg hurt, his cheeks had burned and his own hand touching the wall looked so sickly pale against the worn beige, it stood out like a ghost._

 

_The chapel had been in flames on their wedding day, burning in the back of Waylon's eyes like a sinister omen._

 

_Hours before Waylon had been nearly unconscious and the heat and the flames had licked around his stark, white smock. He'd been carried up and lifted away from the grave he had so desperately wanted to crawl into by Eddie Gluskin. The man who had ….cared for him. In the way he was capable of._

 

_But they hadn't been alone, someone had to officiate after all. In the shape of a ghost mist fog._

 

“ _If you are what they say you are,” Eddie had said, “then you can do anything, can't you?”_

 

“ _I don't know who you've been listening to,” the voice warbled, strange and unfamiliar, “but that's not who I am or ever was. More like, I'm offering you a deal. Like the devil would.”_

 

“ _That's ok,” Eddie had said, “I honestly felt a little bit...abandoned lately, by the good lord. They say things like this are all about testing one's faith but I think, if you'll excuse me, that's probably bullshit the pulpit likes to sell on Sundays to keep the young lambs in line. Maybe I was a lamb once, but not anymore.”_

 

_A slight laugh from the unknown voice, it sounded so dark. So sinister._

 

“ _If you read enough shit about the occult,” the voice said, “all the old gods were turned into demons anyway.”_

 

Waylon shook like a leaf, he trembled at Eddie Gluskin's feet. His body burned, it was on fire. Hot, red wet heat.

 

“I don't know who I am anymore,” Waylon said, pressing his face against Eddie's thick thigh, “could you remind me?”

 

He should be looking at Eddie up from the ground with scars under his eyes but he wasn't. It was impossible, unreal but it hadn't been a lie. This was the truth looming over him, bleeding and red. Like darkness.

 

Like madness.

 

An insanity that had sunk into his skin.

 

“You're my little girl,” Eddie hissed at him, “ and don't you _dare_ forget it.”

 

The hand that clutched his throat with unbearable tightness sent a thrill through Waylon's sick, messed up body. Waylon was slammed onto the cold mattress that was in their room. Was this what his life had become? Raped in what was functionally a prison by a man who had been known for his instability and serial murders. Terror grew sick and thick in Waylon's belly. This was what real darkness was and it felt so much like home it was frightening the hell out of him.

 

Not long ago he'd had a house. He'd been married to his best friend. He'd had two boys who were the light of his life. He had lived well, though not without some regrets mostly due to his shaky economic situation. But it had been good, it had been right.

 

This was so wrong. But it felt _right_. Like a block sliding into place, endless code written on walls with human excrement. Dark shapes in the edges of his head that were moving, writhing. Flowers blooming like blood, demons with huge cocks, blood stained walls that spoke in an incomprehensible language.

 

DOWN THE DRAIN

 

What the blood words had said on the wall was more of a feeling than an imperative but he had jumped down anyway into a hole in the ground that had led to a rank, heap of corpses and down there, he had fed. Until he'd found the grate that lead up, far away into Eddie's bridal chambers.

 

“I don't want this,” Waylon choked, “it's too painful.”

 

“Shhh,” Eddie said, as he gripped Waylon around the throat, “It's all right now, I'm here darling. Here just for you.”

 

Butterflies that looked like his own spread legs when he opened them, stained and wet from his own punctured membranes, red as blood.

 

“I can't wait,” Eddie said, while sliding inside Waylon's hot wet heat, “until you remember everything.”

 

It was obscene. Waylon was being impaled by another man's penis. It was vile, it wasn't what he wanted. He wanted his wife back, he wanted his-

 

“Shh,” Eddie said, delighted when Waylon struggled under him, “it only hurts a bit, at first. Take it you whore. Eat it up you sad little bitch. Take my cock like the slut you are.”

 

Waylon shouted, his eyes going wide and rolling back into his head. But Eddie swiftly slapped him across the face with such intensity it was like being punched. With his ears ringing and repulsion violently battling with Waylon's freshly discovered lust, he writhed against Eddie's pelvis.

 

It was deep and it was relentless and Waylon knew they had acted out this exact scenario many times before. He'd forget, then he'd remember. He'd run away and then get caught. He'd be saved and then escape and wish he had stayed in that grim craft room where the whirr of the table saw represented more than just a man who liked to build.

 

“ _I'm fucking you deep aren't I,” Trager said, his grunts permeated with his non-stop chatter, “so how do I compare with your favorite beau? All that growth hormone had to have given me a few extra inches, don't you think Waylon? Oh look, your eyes tell me you've just remembered who you are. The little techie sent to fix the big, bad machine. All that bullshit window dressing belongs in the outside world, not in here stripped down to the bone. I have to say the therapy has made me feel a bit better about my daddy's disappointed expectations, how about you? You can call me Daddy if you like, I know you were one. And now you're everyone's bleeding, begging bitch. Take my massive dick you fucking cunt, eat it up. I'll rape you until you can't move, I'll stitch you up just to tear open another hole you fuckin-”_

 

“Eddie,” Waylon moaned, his eyes welling with tears, “it feels good, it feels so good.”

 

That was the sickest thing about it, Waylon liked it. Liked it best when Eddie pushed him down and made sure he knew who he was, and who exactly he belonged to.

 

“I'm giving you what you want,” Eddie said, violently thrusting, “I'm cumming inside, you whore. Take it, take it, take it...”

 

Like a perverse staccato Eddie hissed in his ear until Waylon's whole body went rigid, as if every single one of his cells was opening. Waiting for the sperm, for the fuel to send everything high and hazy. Like a drug he couldn't get enough of.

 

Waylon wasn't resisting in the slightest, though he could have. He liked to clench his knees around Eddie's massive back and feel the sweat slick against his legs. He liked the feeling of a hot, massive body on top of him. He enjoyed being called names, he liked being hit. It made the fucking feel even better, it was like being punished.

 

It was sick. And it was wrong. But he lusted for all of it. He longed for the man who could make him feel it. The fucked up person who had made...

 

Who had made him _better._

 

Maybe it was the choked cry that escaped Waylon's lips, the miserable sadness that came from a deep, dark place inside of him. But Eddie crooned, he loved Waylon's agony. He licked up the side of Waylon's face and forced his tongue and the fine sheen of sweat he had worked up into Waylon's mouth and groaned with delirious pleasure. Thrusting to the hilt, bottoming out in Waylon's ass, the burning cum was hot and Eddie's finishing thrusts relentless. It felt good, it felt wrong, it was everything.

 

And it was the best sex of Waylon's life, he realized.

 

How fucked up was that?

 

_I'm so sorry, Lisa. What's wrong with me? Lisa...Lisa..._

 

Delerium after the come down. A sense of incredible loss.

 

_Lisa...._

 

Holding the phone in the gas station while Eddie waited in the jeep. An endless ringing to nothing. A dial tone. No voices on the other end, no tales told to him about Peacock or Murkoff or Miles Upshur.

 

Just dead air.

 

“ _You called your family didn't you?” Eddie's voice, laced with longing and loneliness and.._

 

_and pity._

 

Waylon came back to himself. Back to the terror. The horror. A silent scream as Eddie pulled out, wet sounds of his body expanding, contracting and holding its shape. Even after all that, he wasn't even torn up inside. The blood and mucous holding his guts together like a child waiting to be born.

 

“So beautiful,” Eddie said, while wiping away Waylon's sweat soaked hair from his forehead, “you're going to be a wonderful mother.”

 

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were waiting for the twins to show up, this is your chapter. Enjoy!

X

 

A living nightmare. That's what it was. His life poured into a dull tube of recollections, cataloged on a shelf like specimen jars and half cut dogs. Waylon wrapped his arms around his knees and shook in the dark, his pale face haloed in blue light from the windows.

 

Eddie had fallen asleep, but Waylon couldn’t sleep. He couldn't think. The buzzing in his brain was reaching a strange crescendo.

 

“Soon you'll remember everything,” Eddie had assured him, with a wet kiss to his cheek, “I need some shut eye, tomorrow's a big day. Try to sleep, darling. Right here where you belong, next to me.”

 

Waylon had shaken his head. He didn't want to say anything, didn't want to acknowledge whatever was between them. It felt like a ghost, faded shadows moving in and out. Like something immaterial that had already happened long ago but wasn't registering in Waylon's long strings of code.

 

_Paging Waylon Park...Mr. Waylon Park...please report..._

 

Who was he even at this point? What the hell had Murkoff done to him? He hadn't a single doubt in his mind that this whole horrifying affair was their fault. Like dreams moving behind his fluttering eyelids he could see Lisa. He could see his boys. They seemed so far away, he seemed so alone.

 

But why? Weren't they waiting for him in a safe house somewhere? He was doubting everything, even the things he knew were true. Like his name and occupation, his history. Family.

 

“The varying effects of the morphogenic engine are unpredictable,” Raul had said to him, but that hadn't been all the secrets he had spilled in Murkoff's cafeteria.

 

Raul Roset was a doctor who really liked to hear himself talk. Waylon often had taken medical men with a grain of salt, too high off their own self importance especially when working with a company like Murkoff.

 

“Listen to some of this real science,” Raul said, playfully, “it'll knock the socks off those equations you cling to.”

 

“Yeah, algebraic coding theory is such a gas,” Waylon said.

 

“This'll make algebraic coding look like a chicken walk,” Raul said, “you ever hear anyone talk about the morphogenic machine? I hear you did some great work for us with what we got from Wernicke.”

 

“The dead doctor?” Waylon had asked, while twirling his fork in his mediocre mashed potatoes, “that wasn't just me. There was a team.”

 

“Well you stood out,” Raul said, “your name came up a few times. That's why they extended your stay here.”

 

“Bully for me,” Waylon said, blithely.

 

He remembered missing his boys that particular morning so much, being away from his family was so hard. He knew Lisa could handle it, she was so much more capable than him in so many ways, but he loathed leaving her to do all the drudgery at home, while Waylon sat alone late at night in his dorm room in the Murkoff staff wing screwing around on reddit.

 

“You've heard of genetic programming, haven't you?” Raul said.

 

“Yes,” Waylon said.

 

“That's part of what we're doing in project Walrider. Machine learning, AI, advanced multi-level systems that adapt and transform normal men into super soldiers.”

 

“Why men,” Waylon said, in the mood to be contrary, “why not women?”

 

“I'm not actually sure,” Raul said, “it's pretty frustrating. Some of corporate wants us to try but there's been some unpredictable results with female staff, let alone patients. We just don't want to stir the pot when it's still so delicate.”

 

“Makes it sound like they're more than machines,” Waylon said, “maybe they're just misogynists, goodness knows there's enough of them in the sciences.”

 

Raul snorted his laughter, trying to bury it behind his napkin. Waylon had to give him credit, he wasn't too uptight to be challenged like the rest of the personality defuncts that ran the place. Certain people weren't to be fucked with, Waylon had learned that early on. Too much contrariness and the wrong sorts of questions and you'd get hung by a Murkoff corporation noose.

 

“I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories,” Raul said, “but have you ever heard of shadow people? ESP? Dream therapy? Pagan rituals? Satanic abuse? Some ineffable human darkness associated with deity? It's all over the internet these days.”

 

“Sure I've heard of all that,” Waylon said, “I've seen the X-files. But I don’t see its practical applications.”

 

“That's where your hard science fails you,” Raul said, leaning closer like he was delivering a secret, “doctors see a lot of weird shit. Unexplained phenomenon in patients and I'm not just talking the wack jobs into near death experiences. I mean things that cannot possibly be explained by what we know as science today. Strange phenomenon that would make even the hardest skeptic crack in two at the whiff of it. And it's all of us, not just a few. The longer you work in the medical sciences, the more likely you'll turn to god eventually to get the least bit of sleep at night. It's a weird and wild world out there and the average person doesn't even believe in it.”

 

Waylon noticed they had a wide birth around them in the cafeteria. Most of the staff liked idle chit chat and not shop talk, it had simply been the mood in Murkoff's common areas. Some invisible rhythm had begun to move through them early on; everyone seemed a little pinched, somewhat tired, a bit on edge. But not Raul, he was practically bursting with energy.

 

“Then what's the point of the therapy,” Waylon questioned, “isn't that supposed to make the hopeless cases better off? Help them understand their problems.”

 

Raul smiled, it was a little bit toothsome. It was the first time Waylon had really seen clearly, these were not good people here. And he wasn't talking about the patients, some of whom had criminal records.

 

“Oh it is helping them in a way,” Raul said, “ but the effects of the morphogenic treatment on patients is too unpredictable to ever be used in conventional ways as a therapy tool.”

 

“If this isn't helping people,” Waylon said, “then what's the point.”

 

“You're helping us find god,” Raul had said, “welcome to demi-deity, Waylon Park.”

 

That evening after his shift with the tech team, Waylon remembered retiring to his room feeling sick to his stomach. He sent an e-mail to Raul the egoist, the chatter box.

 

_**Can you show me? I just want to know what my code is doing to these people. One man of science to another. Fully confidential of course.** _

 

_**Waylon Park** _

 

A few hours later, Waylon had his answer. A video link to an internal Murkoff memo sent to the corporates and a few other doctors. Christ, it had been horrible. The man had barely looked human, a broken creature with more tumours than skin.

 

“What are we doing,” Waylon had said, looking at the man turned mutant by therapy and drugs, “what the hell am I doing here?”

 

It had led to his later choices. Send an e-mail, hope for a response. Use an onion router, firewall, a little trick taught to him by his old roommate who swore by simple tools for complex jobs. It hadn't gone well, hacking had never been his forte. He had fucked up.

 

_**Lisa, baby. I fucked up. I'm so sorry.** _

 

Welcome to demi-deity Waylon Park.

 

Something had been waiting in the mountain. Something much worse than idle cafeteria talk.

 

_**Walrider II** _

 

What had it meant that they couldn't use women? Waylon wondered about it, his memories were so shattered and unclear. He was fairly certain the idea he could give birth was some kind of delusion, he was perhaps expelling clouds of nanomachines through the blood mucous leaving his body. It made as much sense as anything else. Miss his boys, bam, nanomachines in the shape of children. Goodness knows the therapy Murkoff offered was only so useful in that it expanded already present delusions well beyond their natural manifestations. Nothing was there that hadn't been there before, they had just taken too much out and put something less back in.

 

Waylon glanced over to the corner of his makeshift apartment, the current moment a bitter reminder that his own mental situation was more than tenuous. The shadows weren't there, nothing was there but the gentle glow of a barely illuminated night sky. Were the children even real? Eddie talked a lot of shit so him saying he could see something wasn't necessarily fact. But...something inside of Waylon told him that Eddie wasn't lying about this. But what the hell the children actually were was definitely debatable.

 

Shuffling under the blankets (it was cold, Waylon wasn't about to suffer hypothermia because he was stuck sleeping next to a homicidal rapist), he thought about the possibility that their entire situation was a set up. If he walked backwards from where they were, it seemed as if it had a kind of order to it. Like an invisible hand had been sweeping them towards Murkoff's competitors for...for what? It was lost in the dust of Waylon's dreams, his blood dream. Like a lead weight Waylon felt his body sinking into the ground and couldn't do anything to stop it.

 

He woke up surrounded by blood, by smoke and by sound. Boiling red fluids, dark places in the corners of men's minds, all laid out like a bad asphalt job in front of him. And the sound, someone shuffling in the dark. The second last living variant. In his dream he walked through the ghost door of their prison cell and out into the half constructed hallway. He heard another sound, a man wailing. He heard something else, people talking. His two captors. Marco and Marjorie.

 

“Wait,” Marjorie said, “I feel like we're being watched.”

 

In the dream she walked towards Waylon but looked beyond him into the dark of the hallway.

 

“No one,” Marjorie said, “I can't wait until we neutralize these patients. Gluskin gives me the creeps.”

 

“He's not that bad,” Marco said, “the other one creeps me out more. Something's not right about him, how can he look at pictures like that and see something entirely different? Like what happened wasn't even real.”

 

“I don't know,” Marjorie said, “but I don't like the way Piquet's been acting. Do you know he's taking orders over the internet? His superiors suddenly vanish and then new ones show up just in time for us to score three new patients from the Walrider project? A bit suspicious if you ask me. I want out Marco, after this project is finished. I don’t' give a shit if we spend our whole lives running, I can't take this shit show.”

 

“All right,” Marco said, “but after this. I can't deny there's something to the Walrider project. Something unique, it does keep me curious.”

 

“Curiosity killed the cat,” she said.

 

“Ha, yeah,” Marco said, “and satisfaction-”

 

The sound behind them escalated. It was someone in pain.

 

“And get him to shut up,” Marjorie snapped, “pump him full of drugs, I don't care what it takes.”

 

“We can't,” Marco said, “bosses orders. We're going to use him to find the Walrider when we cut the other two open.”

 

Waylon dreamed his way through solid walls, touching them like wilting flowers and finding the source of the sound down a lonely, white hallway. In another room there was a man wrapped tight in bandages, mouth wound up and eyes empty and carved out. On the back of his head was an ugly, pulsating sore.

 

“Way-lon,” the voice wailed, “Waay-lon.”

 

Like a sing song.

 

“I don't know you,” Waylon said, feeling delirious, like his dream was about to break, “who are you?”

 

“Waylon,” the man repeated.

 

“Are you hurt?” Waylon asked.

 

Stupid question, he supposed. Like anyone touched by Murkoff wouldn't be in pain.

 

“Come closer,” the man said, “let me...I can help you.”

 

Funny that the pitiful creature in the cage wanted to offer him comfort.

 

“What's your name,” Waylon said.

 

“I...want to tell you a secret,” the man said, whisper hissing through his bandaged mouth, “I have an itch. Do you have an itch?”

 

Waylon leaned over, his ephemeral body beginning to fall to pieces. It wouldn't be long now, he'd be crumbling back into the waking world.

 

“What sort of secret are you keeping?” Waylon said, his voice slurred and thick.

 

“Waylon,” the man said, “I saw you in the blood dream.”

 

On the man's head was a sore that pulsated, bled, demanded to be relieved. If Waylon could just cut it open...he would....set this one...free....

 

Waylon woke up on the cooling mattress with a start. It was day light outside, his body still hurt. His mind hurt worse.

 

“What sort of secret is that,” Waylon said, beginning to cough.

 

He staggered to the bathroom and retched a fine spray of blood. Wiping his mouth he began to feel sick again but not for the usual reasons. Where the hell was Eddie? Had they-

 

Would they-?

 

No.

 

Waylon threw up again in the sink. It was a rich copper red, the same colour that flowed through Eddie that was filled with tiny, rejected nanomachines.

 

They were going to kill Eddie. Waylon knew this, like he had known other things. Where he was getting these secrets he couldn't quite place but, there they were as sudden as dawn light flickering through the windows. And then _they_ appeared, the shadow people. The children. Waiting.

 

Save Eddie or leave through the hole he had chipped away while Waylon slept. Get rid of the serial killer, the rapist, the evil man and the abusive husband or...

 

“I can't leave him,” Waylon said, nearly hysterical.

 

He pressed a red smeared hand against the mirror leaving blood coloured fingerprint marks. The face reflected back wasn't familiar, too pale and washed out.

 

“I can't. Not after-”

 

Not after....

 

After....

 

What?

 

The black briefcase Eddie had taken from the car was under the desk stacked neatly among their other belongings. Waylon dug out the case, he clicked the lock. He knew the code. Knew what it would be because...

 

_Trager screaming at him, “you little bitch! Get back here! I'm not through with your ass yet, I haven't opened it up to your neck!”_

 

Waylon knew their minds. All the variants. And some of them had been Murkoff's own people, just like him. Ex-employees, corporates. Security. And everything they had known, he knew now too. Like their entire lives had been downloaded into his machine infected cells.

 

Click. Click. Clickclick. Clickclickclickclick.

 

The numbers were the same that had blazed across his patient jumpsuit.

 

**2536**

 

And the ones that had begun his career with Murkoff.

 

**8208**

 

Inside was a gun. A sniper rifle. Waylon didn't know how to shoot but Chris Walker had and what remained of him was inside Waylon's brain telling him how to find the bullets in the red velvet case and how to switch to safety, how to load them into the chamber, how to kill.

 

He had to save Eddie. He couldn't let them...the variants didn't belong to Piquet. They belonged to him. They were his boys now.

 

Because......of what had happened. Because of Murkoff and god damn Jeremy Blair and his fucking fi-

 

His fi-

 

_Waylon. Better focus. Don't want you hurting your head anymore than it's already been split open._

 

“Miles?” Waylon said, whipping around.

 

There was nobody there. Just the warm gun in his hand and the determination he wasn't going to let his family get destroyed...not _this time._

 

Too overwhelming to focus on the ramifications now, he had to go on. He had to rescue his husband from the clutches of Piquet. Because he knew, they weren't just a competitor they were a surrogate. They were Murkoff's escape hatch. Let the government pretend they had it all under control, let one corporation die and rise from the ashes in the sad dregs of another. Kill the turncoats, make a new nest in their old, dusty carapace. Insect life was all a monstrous operation like Murkoff understood. No humanity, just a dull march towards what they saw as progress and more importantly, profit. Kill all the rest.

 

Shuddering breaths between his teeth Waylon swore.

 

“Fuck Murkoff and everything it was,” Waylon said, his voice breaking into a frantic pitch, “I hate them. Nothing but ashes left of everything they touch...”

 

It wasn't just him saying that but all the rest. The dead ones that only lingered on in his head like ghosts, the phantoms without physical form any longer. The shadow people. Shapes lingering in the dark.

 

Two shapes. Familiar bursting behind his eyes as he staggered forward. He remembered now and he wished, so much, that he hadn't.

 

The twins. They had told him. Told him the truth. Watched him fall apart.

 

_We'll take you home._

 

_Let the guilt consume you, just a little._

 

_Wrap him up tight._

 

_The others will want a taste._

 

_We'll give them one, piece at a time. Just like the old priest said._

 

_But first._

 

_To us._

 

_To Savor._

 

_Is he a man?_

 

_I don't think so._

 

_Looks like one on the outside._

 

_But it's the inside that counts._

 

_He's the holy mother._

 

_The one who forgives._

 

_Who births god._

 

_Who makes us immortal._

 

Waylon remembered that he'd wanted to die, that his guilt had been too much to even reconcile with his continued survival. The mess he'd made of his perfectly imperfect life. All the things he had taken for granted, the ones he had wanted to do. Foolish things like clean up the yard, put half his computer junk into storage the way he'd promised Lisa, over and over but he never had because of looking for work and it had been depressing and so desperate and oh, how he wished he was back in that miserable depression now and not the bone deep hell he had no way to escape but getting out, going anywhere. Even through death itself.

 

“Don't worry,” the one had said, “we'll take care of you. And so will the rest. They know what's coming, we all do.”

 

“Yes. Murkoff thinks we're stupid. We'll show them,” the second had said.

 

“How many have been through his tender insides?” the one asked, “Has there been a lot of stretching?”

 

The second flicked his thick tongue over his lips, “we'll be sure to take care. By the end, nothing is going to tear him apart. He'll take both of us...”

 

“Both of us, at once,” the one said, his eyes looming in the dark, “put him where the priest told us. We'll do it first then the others can have their share.”

 

“Make them line up,” the second said, “make them listen. This one is poetry.”

 

“This one is beauty,” the first agreed, “I want his mind.”

 

“And I want his heart,” the second said.

 

“For us both,” they said in unison, “his body.”

 

Their stories were miserable and sad, lonely lives in isolation. The product of incest and an abusive, insular family that considered them less than human. Trapped in a basement with nothing but books for company they had become warped by neglect. But that didn't make what they had done to other people any kinder. The papers called them the Texas Chainsaw Twosome. They'd been cannibals, incestuous lovers, torturers, vile to everyone but themselves. But the rest of society just hadn't understood what it was like to be together forever in one body.

 

The yard had been drenched in a dark green fog. They had forced Waylon to strip off his clothes, put chains around him.

 

“No escape,” the one had said, “and no capture.”

 

“They're watching,” the second said, “from the windows. Can you hear them? They want you for themselves but we got here first.”

 

“Second technically,” the one said, “there was the cannibal.”

 

“He lacked grace,” the second said, “doesn't count.”

 

Waylon had been terrified. He had been frightened. He'd known who he was then, the husband of Lisa and father to two little boys. He felt terrible for these men, he felt worse for himself. Their nude hairy bodies and massive uncircumcised cocks were intimidating and mildly horrifying. Their strength bolstered and exaggerated by Murkoff's terrible medical science. They had hauled him in their chains as he struggled barefoot across the cold, dewy grass until they came to a small clearing with a few picnic tables.

 

“Put him here,” the one said, “make sure he's supported. Let's take our time.”

 

Chains wrapped around the picnic table and Waylon positioned on his hands and knees like a sow ready to be mated. They stood behind him as he trembled and shook, tears had run down his face.

 

“Please,” Waylon had said, misunderstanding their intentions, “..please. I have a family. I have two kids.”

 

“We know you,” the second said, “from the blood dream.”

 

“We love you,” the first said, “just as you love us.”

 

“What are you t-talking about,” Waylon shivered in the cold, wet breeze against his naked skin, “I don't know either of you.”

 

A sullen rain had started falling from the dark sky, it was freezing, adding immeasurably to Waylon's discomfort.

 

“He has his moments,” the second said, “just like we all do.”

 

“They ruined him, look at him shake with fear,” the first said, “I love him this way, don't you?”

 

“He was normal,” the second said, “It was something we couldn't have being as we are, undefinable and as unreal as a fairytale.”

 

“But we can have him now,” the first said, “and I think if we explain ourselves, he'll understand. He has to, he loves us.”

 

“You see what you had is what we all want,” the second said, “a family that understands.”

 

“A mother who loves us,” the first said, “just like you.”

 

Waylon shook his head, he hadn't understood. His memories had been dissolved into whatever he could cling to. The last shreds of a made up delusion to keep him sane, keep him fighting. Keep him alive until...

 

“I want his mouth,” the one said, while pressing his hand on Waylon's curly haired head, “deep down his throat.”

 

The second grunted in agreement, his erection began to grow. Waylon began to panic.

 

Christ, they had been huge and he hadn't been prepared for it to happen. A thick massive cock had been shoved down his throat. Biting he knew, was antecedent to his survival. He swallowed as much as he could, tasted their sweat and salt. The bald one was harder to get in his mouth, he smelled stronger and was a bit more male in taste than Waylon had ever wanted to endure. But they weren't about to waste their cum on his face, they hauled him around on the chains and made sure his legs were spread.

 

“Look at the blood,” the second said, “all that redness. Isn't it exciting?”

 

“I'm bleeding,” Waylon said, hoping to dissuade them from continuing, “the cannibal hurt me.”

 

The one laughed, a low strange sound, “you hurt yourself trying to forget.”

 

His hand wrenched around Waylon's neck and he nearly went blank as a massive cock made its way slowly inside of him. It didn't hurt. It felt good. It was a nightmare. His body burned like nothing he'd felt before...except he had felt it before.....in the lab...with the cannibal....no, with Frank who knew all about him and had tried to get him to eat human flesh...but...he had wanted....human blood......instead..................................

 

Some new horror rose up inside of him. Something he had forgotten. Something important.

 

“Tell me...what I....forgot,” Waylon gasped, head thrown back against the hard park bench.

 

“Should we tell him?” the second said, “I think he'll forget again as soon as we do.”

 

“It's sad to see him like this,” the one said, “let's tell him. I want to watch him fall apart.”

 

“Your family,” the second one said, his strange face warping into a grin, “and Murkoff went head to head.”

 

The second man began to lift Waylon up, dragging him taught with the chains. The first twin grunted, adjusting himself. It was almost painful, good in an agonizing way. Then the second twin positioned himself, slid in nice and slow next to the first. Waylon nearly blacked out; it was painful, it was astonishing, they were going to fill him up. They were going to make him whole.

 

“They lost,” the first twin said, “and now our congregation is all you have.”

 

Head thrown back, Waylon felt their massive cocks slide inside of him. All he could do was open his mouth and scream.

 

He remembered the truth. He immediately forgot.

 

They moved in a strange unison, their thick penises thrusting into Waylon's bleeding walls. They held him aloft still chained to the park table while they groaned their pleasure. Their warped mouths opening and tasting Waylon's mouth with their tongues, their hot flesh pistoning in and out like a well oiled machine.

 

“Someone,” Waylon gasped, reaching his chain wrapped hand out, “help me!”

 

The windows up above the asylum grounds were dim and aglow with green, warbling light. In the darkness Waylon could see a shadow, a person watching from the fourth floor that looked like a big man. No one else heard him, no one else would come.

 

Waylon felt the burning heat move through him and he couldn't stop it, though he desperately wanted to. It lit him up. Like a fire, like a burn that began inside and wouldn't ever leave him. His body orgasming endlessly, until it was an agony ripping through his muscles and he blacked out. And all those terrible memories clawing their way from the darkness melted into something else. A strange, misplaced guilt.

 

_Look at the pictures Waylon, what do you see?_

 

_I...don't know._

 

_Look again._

 

_I...can't tell. It's just...bodies. They're just burned up bodies. Why won't you leave me alone?! I don't understand what you want from me!_

 

_Who are they? You know the answer Waylon. Think hard about what we talked about last time. You know who's responsible too, don't you?_

 

_Stop lying to me!_

 

_You're responsible Waylon, you are. You're the one who did it. You set the fire!_

 

_I didn't! I wouldn't! I was happy, you god damn bastards get out of my head!_

 

The rain was heavy, dank and cold. Waylon shook against the fence. It was all Murkoff's fault...all Murkoff...they had...they had...

 

“They lied to you,” the first said, while petting his matted, curled hair, “they always do.”

 

“The outside isn't to be trusted,” the second said, “we learned that the hard way. It's easy to be misunderstood.”

 

“All we did was write poetry,” the first said, “it's not our fault it was misread.”

 

Waylon shook his sweat soaked brow and felt his stretched open body ache with a terrible hunger. He wanted....what did he want? He wasn't responsible for their...he didn't want to be....he...who was he again?

 

“The priest will come,” the second said, “we'll help take you to your congregation.”

 

One of the Murkoff security guards came bursting out from a double door, frightened and alone.

 

“But first,” the first said, “we know what you've been longing for.”

 

“Oh yes,” the second said, “we understand that particular desire.”

 

Their gaze went to the panicking man. A security guard for Murkoff. They were responsible. The fetid, wet air made Waylon pant like a dog, like a hungry animal.

 

“Get him,” the first said.

 

It was a horror show after that. Screaming, hot wet blood. The security guard saw Waylon coming out of the green mist and shrieked a wailing, loud agonizing sound. The other two ripped him apart with their bare hands while Waylon lapped up the blood.

 

“I-I don't want to be this,” Waylon exhaled shakily, his hands covered in red, “I don't want to live like this.”

 

Waylon had pushed it out of his head until there was nothing left but his desperate need to make it stop.

 

“Follow us then,” the second said, “father Martin said the truth finds a way.”

 

“It's time we found ours,” the first said, “in the flames.”

 

The gun was in Waylon's hands and the past was just the past, dead as the priest who had burned to death in the chapel. Dead as the twins that had happily roasted themselves along with him, hoping that Waylon would meet them all in some kind of blood dream afterlife that may or may not exist. Waylon wasn't sure of anything anymore but he'd certainly never prayed a day in his life and wasn't about to start now. But at the time...death had seemed like the only certainty worth clinging to.

 

All Waylon knew for sure was that his eyes hurt like hell. He could move through walls like they were air. And the memories, they wouldn't stop coming.

 

“ _Hold him down,” a doctor barked._

 

_The security guard had a firm grip, another injection. Another medical terror that Waylon could do without, especially after what they did to him last time. They'd cut him open the sadistic bastards, opened up his gut and stuffed something in there that made him feel like his insides were eating their way out._

 

“ _I can barely keep my grip,” the security guard panted, “Get another one in here!”_

 

“ _No,” Waylon panted, “no you don't you fucking- you fucking!-”_

 

_It was like pushing a ghost, riding on air. Waylon just had to be desperate enough to try and bam, just like that the security guard had blown the doctor's head off. Waylon had, to his own disgust, lapped up half the blood before another security member dared come in to assess what the hell was going on. And then, a whole team._

 

_Code red after that. Lock down. They drugged him until he could barely see and then spent the rest of the day poking and prodding him trying to figure out what exactly they had let out from the mountain. Why the ideas they had germinated in the patients had suddenly become...airborne. The strange idea floating among the patients that a mother would love them despite all their many and horrifying flaws..._

 

“I'm not myself,” Waylon panted, loading the rifle with trembling hands, “it's ok. I just have to- I can't let them-”

 

Through walls and hallways and white half structured buildings. It was like a homing beacon that Waylon could only feel when his eyes were closed. He found the strange man first, mind locked like a skipping record player on simple phrases.

 

“Way-lon,” the lilted voice called, “I have a secret.”

 

“So do I,” Waylon said, as he felt his eyes split down and the blood run free, “I don't think I am who I thought I was.”

 

“Way-lon,” the man said, sing song, “I can help you...just let me...”

 

“No no,” Waylon said, tenderly, “I'm going to help _you,_ it's ok. Just hold on.”

 

Waylon's will broke the lock, it snapped the bars, it bent metal into claws. He wasn't entirely sure how long he could keep this up, some instinct was warning him there was a definite limit to this kind of physical manipulation with only his mind. But he could help, he could rescue somebody from Murkoff's hell. Goodness knows, he had failed to help the rest of them when he could barely help himself.

 

“Way-lon,” the man said.

 

“It's me,” Waylon said, “lean down. I can...help you see.”

 

The growth on the man's head that was pulsating red and angry had been turning into lead. The tumours that Wernicke had found in autopsies that Waylon had read about in secret reports, he knew what they were now. They were pupae, beginnings, entryways into a land filled with unspeakable things.

 

“I can- just a minute,” Waylon said, reaching his hand out.

 

Scrambling from a medical gurney there came a scalpel, sharp and silver.

 

“I can cut it,” Waylon said, “it'll feel better I promise.”

 

“I have an itch,” the man replied.

 

“I know,” Waylon said, and he began to cut.

 

It wasn't difficult, the man hardly made a sound. Barely a grunt of pain. He had been in so much pain for so long it barely registered but Waylon still tried to be careful.

 

“There,” Waylon said, “you're free.”

 

The wound cut open had become an eye. Grown fresh from the seeds planted by Murkoff that they hadn't bother to nurture. Failed experiments. Nature didn't make failures, they were just weird or different from what human beings in their infinite scientific wisdom expected. Perfectly imperfect. That's what Waylon had thought when he had studied biology in high school and it was certainly his sentiment now after what had been done to him.

 

“Way-lon,” the man said, his tongue fell from his mouth and the empty sockets twitched under the bandage, “I see you.”

 

“Glad somebody does,” Waylon said, he coughed violently, retching blood between his fingers.

 

The egg timer was running out somewhere inside of him. He had to be fast, he had to get to the killing grounds because soon he would....

 

Something. He wasn't sure. Just knew it was imperative. As the darkness closed in around him the memories fell like bricks onto his head. He didn't want to remember...he didn't want to....But it had all been planned this way from the start.

 

But by who?

 

Marjorie screamed and barricaded herself into a lab as Waylon shambled by, his legs starting to fail him. He still limped even when he could pass through walls with a thought, the mind more powerful than the physical. He got there finally, the place in his head that he knew to look for. The storage area for unused building materials. There was metal, there was a ladder but there wasn't any rain only melted snow, not like last time. Not like the asylum when the Walrider's ghost had flown beyond his outstretched hands up into the smoke stack. Waylon climbed all the way high to the top and saw from the very edges of the metal railing what was happening near the exit below.

 

“You've outlived your usefulness,” it was Piquet, “and I'm sorry friend but we're going to have to do away with you and your little fellow today.”

 

“That's my wife,” Eddie said, cold and dangerous, “have a little respect.”

 

It was almost funny, the way Eddie demanded consideration when not ten hours ago he was choking Waylon on the apartment floor while fucking him dry. Waylon didn't know much about conventions in romantic relationships between men but he was fairly certain that was a bit more than inconsiderate. From his high vantage point Waylon could only see Eddie's back, white clad in a dress shirt. Red on his hands. He had probably tried to crawl through the hole in the apartment unit before Waylon had even woken up, possibly murdered a few guards when he got the drop on them. Eddie's footsteps had always been so quiet, it was how he survived his hellish house as a child. Tip toe at night passed the monsters, hope they don't wake up.

 

_He really came through for us, huh? Colour me surprised._

 

Waylon shook his head and scrunched up his eyes. Who the hell was that? Regardless, the gun was aimed. Chris Walker had known what to do and so did Waylon and he did it without hesitation. But now, there was the question. Who the hell was the villain in this situation? Piquet was no angel but neither was Eddie. Waylon could be rid of all of them in one go. He certainly had enough bullets...

 

“He's my,” Waylon swallowed down the blood sticking to his throat, “no, he's not really. He's more than- he's something...he looked out for me....he's....I'm.....I.....I'm his wife but it's just a delusion, it's just a- bad dream to hold onto because...of....”

 

Waylon's mind went blank. He pulled the trigger.

 

Piquet went down.

 

There was a shout, a scream. Waylon hardly had the strength anymore to hold the gun but that was fine because he didn't have to. His mind lashed out. The agents turned on each other. Like a deadly Rube Goldberg machine.

 

Blam. Blam. _Blam._

 

All done.

 

Waylon slumped down from his knees onto his side, breathing heavily. He felt like he was going to die, he felt like something was inside of him trying to get out. He felt like....

 

Shit.

 

He felt like he was going to give birth.

 

“About time,” a slightly annoyed voice said as the loud sound of someone climbing the metal ladder echoed in the silent warehouse, “I was beginning to think you'd never come. I suppose women are fickle at the best of times...”

 

Eddie's face appeared and then the rest of him as he stepped into the light.

 

“Darling?” Eddie said curiously.

 

“Over here,” Waylon said weakly, “you god damn bastard. You knew all along I was coming.”

 

Eddie smirked, “I had my doubts, once or twice.”

 

Waylon felt cold and limp, like all the fire was leaving him. Eddie looked at him and gently touched under his eyes.

 

“You look like yourself again, my darling wife,” Eddie said, reverently, “I bet that leg hurts too. Do you remember the elevator shaft?”

 

Yelling and anger and pain. A leg set with care afterward.

 

“Yes,” Waylon said, wincing, the pain wasn't dull anymore, “but I don't want to.”

 

“I think you will soon,” Eddie said, his voice carrying an edge, “we'll set you up in one of the labs. I think a friend of ours will help us with a little encouraging. Hold still, I'm picking you up. Figured you'd need a break after your little adventure. A lady's capacity for exertion only goes so far, best to leave the rest to me.”

 

Carried over Eddie Gluskin's shoulder just like before, just like their honeymoon. Waylon reached out when they passed the dead agents and Piquet's blown open head. All that blood going to waste....such a shame...

 

“Don't worry,” Eddie said, “I'm sure we can rustle up something for you to eat after the big event.”

 

Waylon shook his head, what the hell was happening? What the hell had he been thinking? What the hell had he done?! He should have shot Eddie right in the skull along with everyone else and run from such an awful place...it was the asylum all over again. It was all so damn confusing...what was he even trying to accomplish?

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, panic rising, “put me down.”

 

“Our relationship has always been about pursuit which has had a certain base appeal,” Eddie said, “but even I grew tired of it after a while and wondered if we could ever work out our differences. And when you went running into the arms of those other men, well, that really hurt especially after what I'd done for you. All those people I killed just to keep you warm and fed.”

 

Eddie was delusional. Eddie lied. Most of all, he made up stories to keep himself from having to accept the ugly, brutal truth of his miserable life. Waylon knew this and he knew enough to be very, very afraid when Eddie started talking about family.

 

“And then I read about you in the files, read about your potential. I knew you wanted to be better than all those other sluts, you were trying to make things right even if you didn't always make the best decisions concerning the future of our family. After all, a woman can only do so much without strong moral guidance, the fairer sex have their limits. But this is going to be our time darling, our special day. I'm going to cut you open just right. No mistakes. You’re going to have my baby and it's going to be _beautiful!_ ”

 

The water puddles under Eddie's feet glinted in the darkness, they reflected Waylon's face. White as ash, colourless and bloodless with red stitches under the eyes that had been neatly done by a careful hand. Curly, white hair a little longer than he liked. He was like a picture that had had all the colour drained from it, replaced by a photographer's flash.

 

_Not human._

 

It was all Waylon could think. He didn't look human he looked like...some fairytale. Something from someone's childish nightmare. Maybe most of the outside was in one piece but the flesh, the colour of his skin. His eyes so red rimmed and sunken, his hair so pallid and whitened to the point it was well beyond albino, that wasn't him. That wasn't what he had looked like before. Why so suddenly had it changed?

 

_Even the Walrider has its limits._

 

A whisper in his head, a nightmare biting at the edges of his brain. It was all so unreal, so far from anything the Waylon of before could have ever imagined. Ants swirling in a spiral, the buzzing in his cells reaching a high arcing vibration. Eddie's heavy pants as Waylon was carried, _heavier than you look, if this is the honeymoon I'd hate to see you on our anniversary!_ And then it hit him, broke through. Waylon had known all along since leaving the asylum, he'd just wanted to forget.

 

There wasn't one Walrider, there were two and both were inside Waylon. But only one was waiting to be born.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will probably edit this more heavily later but I thought you all deserved a Halloween treat. Enjoy!

XI

 

A spatter of blood fell from Waylon's mouth and stained the white floor a voluminous red.

 

“Not long now darling,” Eddie said, with cloying cheerfulness.

 

What was the spinning whirl of another series of white hallways compared to the sound in his head that was growing, writhing out of control?

 

_The functioning imaging isn't talking to the ASL..._

 

_I thought you were just a software engineer..._

 

_Mr. Park is going to have us up and running in no time, isn't that right Mr. Park?_

 

Waylon's vision began to blur into butterflies, blood flowers, demons with massive cocks.

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, as his horror grew, “put me down. I can't-this is _wrong!_ ”

 

“You're not getting away from me this time,” Eddie said, “not now. Not ever again!”

 

Deposited onto a gurney, Eddie roughly pulled the straps around Waylon's wrists.

 

“I know this is uncomfortable,” Eddie said, with relish, “and I'd hate to bring back any bad memories concerning that doctor, do you remember his name? I don't, it's not like he meant anything.”

 

_The man on the bed was a mangled mess. Waylon cowered underneath it, shaking. His breath coming out in wet, red gasps. And when Waylon turned his head, he saw someone else and nearly screamed. He saw Miles Upshur bleeding from the fingers, trembling like a kitten. They were both trapped._

 

“ _Trager!!! TRAAGGEERR!!!”_

 

_The bed above them rocked and snapped, they had to run out from under it. To get out. Get away from this awful place..._

 

Waylon screamed and pulled his wrists against the restraints. He vomited blood. Eddie gave him a pat on his arm that was supposed to be reassuring.

 

“Don't worry I know just the person to help with the delivery. Give me a second to find them,” Eddie said, eyes wild with manic conviction.

 

The high pitched scream woke Waylon from his rapidly developing delirium. It was Marjorie, she was being dragged by the hair. Eddie made some rotten comments to her, she spat at him. He hit her. Waylon begged Eddie to stop, or he thought he did. Things were getting rather blurry.

 

“Work the machine,” Eddie said, in a cold voice, “or I'll kill you.”

 

“What,” Marjorie said, her throat raw, “not gonna do to me what you did to those pretty girls?”

 

“I don't like men,” Eddie snapped.

 

Marjorie took on the look of someone who had grown up tough and had heard it all before. But she wasn't stupid, she didn't say what she wanted to say. _Fuck you, asshole._

 

“Piece of shit,” she hissed between her teeth.

 

“Help me,” Waylon rasped.

 

“Shut up,” Marjorie spat, “you're half the reason this happened. Marco's dead. They're all dead. Everyone but us. And I'm not dying here!”

 

Maybe, Waylon considered, Marjorie had survived her whole life because she was better at surviving than everyone else.

 

“What are the levels,” Marjorie said, “or do you know that?”

 

“I don't,” Eddie admitted, “but he does. Darling, why don't you recite them?”

 

Waylon wasn't going to say anything but it felt like someone else began to work his tongue. His throat hurt, he was dry. Thirsty. So thirsty.

 

“120, 455, 34.19, 22.18,” Waylon said.

 

_Don't you look at us, I love him._

 

The cannibal's voice rattled through his head.

 

“Don't look at me,” Waylon said.

 

_Ugly. So ugly. Warped self image through a glass. A man that he wasn't, a story that wasn't his. All of these men were so lonely, their lives so sad. All he had to do was walk into their mirrors and show them someone who cared and they fell to their knees. Not so scary now...not when they were friends._

 

Marjorie stared him in the eyes until she began to input the levels on the machine she hooked up to Waylon with careful, practiced precision.

 

“This will hurt,” Marjorie said.

 

She wasn't sorry but she knew what he was. Who could blame her?

 

_Mirrors were like glass. Waylon was in the basement, down in the dark. There was a very old man in a wheelchair. They looked at each other, Waylon with confusion and the old man with wonder._

 

“ _Mein Godt,” the old man said._

 

_Waylon pressed his fingers up against the glass and they went right through. He removed them. Like liquid nightmares._

 

“ _What have they done to you,” the old man said, “I never imagined they would do this. Never thought they could accomplish-”_

 

_The sound of gunfire, corporate cops. Waylon knew they were coming but he knew who else was coming too._

 

“ _He thinks of me like a father,” the old man said, “but you don't. Why is that? Who were you?”_

 

“ _Waylon Park,” he said, throat cracked and dry, “software engineer. Father of two, my wife-”_

 

“ _I wouldn't think too hard,” the old man said, “the pain is manageable with the memories so far removed. They tortured you didn't they? In many ways. Took advantage of an unfair situation. My name is Wernicke. I can help you. Do you want my help?”_

 

“ _You made the Walrider,” Waylon said, nearly sick from the thought, “everything is your fault.”_

 

“ _It isn't,” Wernicke said, “I take the blame for much suffering. But this? This wasn't my idea. It was theirs, it was Murkoff's.”_

 

“ _I have the damn videotape!” Waylon shouted, “I gave it to a journalist. He can- He can-”_

 

 _Waylon's mind went blank._  
  
“Listen to me,” Wernicke said, his tone kind but warning, “if you don't end it yourself, it won't ever end. Walrider II was never meant to be realized, it's a doomsday machine. But Murkoff thinks it's the next level humanity must evolve to. But you can stop this. You can _stop it. End yourself on your own terms-”_

 

_Waylon met his eyes in shock. Kill himself?_

 

“ _It's the only way,” Wernicke said, “and if I know Murkoff, they haven't left you much to go home to. If anything. Your type of experiment...the Walrider...it only works when someone is in the utmost of agonies. Not physically but deep inside. Something was done to you, they took away your humanity.”_

 

“ _No,” Waylon said, his eyes wet, “I still have that. Not like you, I never wanted any of this. I don't want to die.”_

 

“ _If you want any hope for humanity,” Wernicke said, “as a fellow man of science. You must.”_

 

“ _I don't like science anymore,” Waylon said, his voice raw from screaming._

 

“ _He's not gonna off himself,” it was the journalist, “don't listen to this nazi fuck he's only playing you. The way the rest did! I read his file! Did you? You godamn nazi, you godamn shit fucking nazi, look what you did to this poor sonofabitch! Billy's a pathetic kid who was lonely, but this guy? He had a family! You took that away from him!”_

 

“ _No,” Waylon said, hands trembling, “they're still alive.”_

 

“ _Will you listen to me!” Miles shouted, the camera in his hand was busted, broken, but it was still filming, “Listen to what I'm saying! Your wife and kids are dead. Murkoff killed them! Your boss managed to off himself trying to make sure it happened, which is a damn small mercy, Lisa didn't go down without a fight. She was...she paid me Waylon. Lisa hired me when I started to sniff around to find out what happened to you. She got close and they killed her for it. Waylon. Waylon! Fuck.”_

 

“ _The trauma creates holes in the brain,” Wernicke said with an air of superiority, “lead tumours. His memories are-”_

 

“ _They're still here,” Waylon said, barely above a whisper, “I'm still me. They didn't...do to me...what they did...to everyone else.”_

 

“ _They made him a fucking god,” Miles said, “or their sick idea of one. And the only reason he hasn't ripped my head off and eaten me like some kinda human baloney sandwich is because he knows I'm the only one who can help him out of this fucking shit hole and tell the truth to the world. Not you. So shut up or tell me what the fuck to do about Billy, who is, might I add probably going to murder the shit out of you once he realizes what you've actually done to him and how much money Murkoff paid his mother.”_

 

“ _I see,” Wernicke said, “resorting to blackmail. I can help you but-”_

 

_Billy was dead. And later, all the variants would meet their doom in the fires or at the hands of a carefully manicured extermination team. But not the three of them._

 

“ _Shit!” Miles was on the floor, bleeding from gun wounds._

 

“ _I can help you,” Waylon said, eyes weeping blood and voice far away from human, “I can make it better.”_

 

_Seven bullets hard and real in the palm of his hand disappearing into nothing._

 

“ _You can't make anything better!” Miles shouted, “Only worse! Godammit!”_

 

_The nano-swarm writhed and swirled. All of them. The ones from inside of him, from the mountain. Flesh and blood and agony put together like a puzzle. And Miles was dying but the rest of him, it could survive. It just needed another chance to be born._

 

“ _I can save you,” Waylon said, even if he had failed everyone else._

 

_Miles' desperation was a palpable thing, “I don't want to die here!”_

 

_It was horrible. It was a nightmare. To the fire, to the fire, to the fire._

 

“ _Darling!”_

 

_The swirling shadows and ghost swarms in human shapes that followed Waylon all the way to the flames, the shadow people. Not children at all, just shades of what once was._

 

“ _I was a little shaky about god,” Eddie had said, while gathering Waylon's limp body from a charred table, “until now.”_

 

_Waylon's head had fallen back until the world was upside down, like his memories. Like his sense of self. But he could see just a bit into the darkness where the rest of them were waiting._

 

“ _I don't want to die in this place,” Miles was so hurt and so far away but a part of him was alive and real and Waylon could feel him the way no one else could, “I don't want to stay here forever. Let's get out. Fuck just getting out, I want revenge! Don't you Waylon? I want to eat a hole through Murkoff's profits. I want them to be sorry they were ever born. We have the tape. We have it! It's here! It's with us! Let's get the fuck out! Let's...I'll help you...a disguise...you can do it to Eddie, too. Come on! It's all in your head, you have every one of them. They all loved you! Don't you see? Can you hear what I'm saying, or are you ignoring me again? Your wife is dead...the kids are all gone...you can't get that back. But this...this....this thing.....this magic...you can......have.....to...make a new family.......and...set us free....”_

 

_The swirling circle of ants. A misunderstood woman who wanted children. A monster rapist turned into a religious leader. The dark suppressed memories in a pure, ordinary man. A woman driven insane by a cult-_

 

“I suggest you run,” Waylon said.

 

The gun was aimed at Waylon's head, more out of fear than intent. Marjorie had tears in her eyes.

 

“I could hear you,” Marjorie said, voice shaking, “in my head. I could feel what you're feeling. My god, what they did to you...the things they did...even I wouldn't...even I couldn't...”

 

“It's like a radio tower,” Waylon said, “get out of the range and you're fine. Run. Get out. Before Eddie thinks twice about leaving you for dead. He'll feed you to me and I won't be able to help it. He's in the next room, get out of here. Survive. Hide. And if anyone from Murkoff ever approaches you again, blow them away for me.”

 

Marjorie nodded shakily, the signal was very powerful but Marjorie's will to survive was even stronger. She took the gun and kept her eye on the door. Quickly, quietly and oh so smart she walked outside into the hall. Nearly gave herself away by screaming, nearly, but Waylon couldn't blame her for that. Sharpy was standing in the hall, totally still, as if waiting.

 

“So silky,” he murmured, as Marjorie crept past him, “silky, silky...”

 

The half-man, the lunatic. The itchy skin with the open, weeping eye.

 

Marjorie ran the rest of the way past Sharpie, beyond them all into the night.

 

Silence blissfully ruled over all.

 

Until it didn't.

 

Waylon could hear his own voice when it screamed. His body was like blood meat, like a flower ripping down and opening. The coordinates and the experiments all lead to this, all lead to-

 

“ _Wernicke could fix this if he wanted to,” Miles said, in his head, “but he doesn't. I know how. I read the damn files. Walrider II was originally planned as a doomsday machine but it's more like human 2.0 in the flesh. They made a big fucking mistake choosing a decent guy as their guinea pig, you're not like the rest of them. You're not like what they're used to. You were normal and they took you apart but didn't count on your ability to piece things back together into something else, something they couldn't control.”_

 

_Eddie sat beside Waylon in the car seat. Eddie's face was slack, his eyes wide as if he were in some kind of shock. They had made him relive his nightmare childhood, his father and uncle raping him over and over again. Eddie wasn't very nice but no one deserved that. No one-_

 

“ _If that stupid boyfriend of yours goes along with this we're saved but fuck if I know what's going through that fucker's head at any moment,” Miles said, “but together there's a chance I can get a body back and you- you can have something. Maybe not the thing you want most but who the fuck could do that? I'm not god, I just look like it. And you're not the big G either but damn, if I'm not impressed by how far they got. You're the closest I've ever seen to actual god damn deity...”_

 

“ _Where am I?” Waylon said, it was so dark, “where are we?”_

 

“ _Shut up for a minute,” Miles voice, “I made a deal with your boyfriend, I can make one with you. I'll let you forget and look normal for a while and you- just fucking live until we can get to where we're going. There's another machine, a fake Murkoff. I'll find them, you just hang in there. Make sure this idiot doesn't mangle you by accident, his head is messier than yours and that's really saying something-”_

 

_The sun had burst over the horizon like fire, like the chapel in flames. Red was the only colour Waylon could see. All the blood he longed for. And Eddie was painted in fire colours like a portrait of sexual violence, like the workshop and the darkness they had shared. Waylon felt like a broken optical comparator, all eyes and no direction. He was gutted, cleaned out._

 

_They were in the jeep. Who was he? Where was he going?_

 

_The door was ajar, ringing loudly._

 

_It was just the two of them in the whole, wide world._

 

_Except...Waylon's family...they were alive...weren't they?_

 

“ _Sure, whatever you have to believe to keep going,” Miles said._

 

_Radio silence._

 

The ribcage opened like a flower, the flesh split. Waylon was bleeding on a table while he was being held down by restraints. It was exactly what had happened before, what Eddie had witnessed. But nothing had come out then but a malformed lump of flesh.

 

“ _Stillborn,” Eddie said, an air of satisfaction around him, “they weren't any good for you, were they? Nothing but half made men. But us, together! We'll make a real family. Let's try again..and again...and again...”_

 

Waylon screamed. It was coming, the nanomachines and the blood from his malformed womb inside his abdomen. The flesh opened up, he could see his own bones and organs flexing like elastic, ripping apart. What crawled out first, was a hand. Then shoulders, then a wet, masculine head. Then more. The rest of the body. Until there was a person standing in afterbirth just as real as Waylon.

 

“Fuck that was disgusting,” the man said, “are you ok? Wait, why the fuck am I asking that? Of course not.”

 

It wasn't exactly pain, more like a long protracted agony. Waylon felt his insides quiver. Where the hell was Eddie?

 

“He's coming,” the man said, “yeah, I guess I can hear what you're thinking now. Great. I hope that's temporary, otherwise every conjugal visit with that creep is going to be hell on my psyche.”

 

Eddie walked in carrying towels and plain clothes from who knows where. He dropped them unceremoniously on a surgical table and then turned his attentions to Waylon's quivering insides.

 

“It's better,” Eddie said, gently reaching in, “look at it. Ripe for the insemination.”

 

“You're sick,” the man snapped.

 

Eddie looked a little annoyed, “no one asked you. It's beautiful. It's perfect. Just like...I suppose you've always been..but seeing it whole is different....a real woman inside.”

 

Waylon could feel it pulse with his heartbeat. A real womb, a healed one. It had been broken before but...it wasn't anymore.

 

“I'm showering before we leave,” the man snapped, turned around and-

 

It was Miles Upshur. He grabbed the towels, wrapped them around himself, pulled together the clothes.

 

“Then we're getting the fuck out of here,” Miles said.

 

“Sure, whatever you say,” Eddie said, enraptured by the pulsing flesh inside of Waylon.

 

Eddie caressed it and Waylon shuddered all over. His guts were being touched, it wasn't painful but weird.

 

Waylon knew he had to get out of there, he had to get away. They were all just a different kind of psycho, same as Murkoff. The two of them were going to bring him somewhere and ...fuck he couldn't remember. His mind felt like melting mercury, shifting and moving.

 

Waylon's ribs were cracking back into place, organs sliding into their original position. The fissure was healing quickly and closing up until there was just a tiny red mark left. It was the same scar Waylon had seen on his stomach, the one he thought was from surgery. Oh, it had been from surgery all right, they had warped his insides beyond all human understanding. Time was up. Now or never.

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, his voice thick with pain, “I'm...really thirsty...you promised and I-”

 

Eddie looked at Waylon and for a second, Waylon was sure he'd seen right through him. But that look of pure adoration almost made Waylon feel a little bad for tricking him.

 

“I'll get you something,” Eddie said, “Marjorie's been pretty busy on her way out. I heard what you said to her, seems like she took it rather literally. So many bodies...I suppose a beautiful woman like you has that effect on people. I'll have to keep my eye open for gentleman callers, make sure they know that my wife is not that type of girl.”

 

A new delusion. Shit. Goodness knows, Eddie had plenty of reason to hate other men long before Waylon was ever in the picture but he was just pulling them out of the air at this point.

 

Somewhere Eddie had picked up a mean looking rifle, he cocked it and leaned outside the door.

 

“There's a lot of screaming,” Eddie said, amused, “don't worry darling, I won't go far. I have a wife to protect and all these men around makes a fella nervous.”

 

The sound of carnage was loud, the screams were short.

 

Eddie laughed sweetly, “just coming out of the woodwork, like an ant farm on fire.”

 

The wrist straps were undone carefully by Waylon and quietly as he could, it wasn't hard when Eddie was still firing from the door. Unfortunately, there were only so many bullets. Eddie sighed and turned around to an empty bed, gurney evacuated, Waylon's shuffling steps fading away.

 

Waylon was halfway down the hall, phased through a back wall and into the hallway. Doing that made him feel slightly nauseous but he was desperate to get away, far from both of them. A sick dread was growing in his stomach and it had nothing to do with the pulsating flesh he knew lurked there. Waylon could hear the corporate cops shooting up each other, it was clearly two teams at each others' throats. They likely had no idea why they were dying or who exactly was in charge, Waylon had every confidence both teams were technically employed by Murkoff but they understood each other as enemies. It was such a waste, so much blood and terror for nothing but profit. There was a hallway that led to the outside, long and floor to ceiling with two way glass.

 

Waylon swallowed thickly, something about it made him afraid. Some memory almost dislodged, a thing of terror set loose.

 

There were no sounds, nothing at all. Only silence. Waylon took his chances and ran passed the glass his powder pale face reflected all over, his eyes bleeding and red rimmed. Near the last mirror Waylon saw something move and froze. Was there someone on the other side? Did they have a gun? No shots came, maybe it was nothing. Just his mind playing tricks on him.

 

Waylon leaned in and saw his own haggard reflection looking back at him, the stitches on his face fresh and red and still remarkably alarming to see. Was it...in the glass...could it be?

 

“Lisa?” Waylon said, whisper quiet.

 

She was there behind the mirror, looking at him. Distraught.

 

“Lisa!” Waylon said, slamming his fist against the glass.

 

It bowed and thundered but didn't break. Lisa didn't flinch, she just looked at him like a statue frozen in misery.

 

But no, that couldn't have been Lisa. It couldn't have been...because...

 

The face wasn't Lisa, it was a dark image. The shape in the form of a man with an assault rifle. It couldn't be Lisa because...

 

Space and time was distorted. The gun fired and went into the head of the cop to the horror and surprise of the team waiting behind him. The glass broke, exploded like a hail of razors slicing into them. So much screaming. So much blood.

 

“Lisa, I'm sorry,” Waylon said, “I fucked up.”

 

Crushed glass under his feet, just like before. Moths like blood shaped flowers, demons with huge cocks. The wail of an emergency siren and the sound of everything descending into chaos. Stumbling towards the bright morning sun Waylon finally felt like he had escaped. He had finally gotten out.

 

And there it was, sitting in the bright red morning sunlight. The red jeep, door ajar, ringing softly.

 

It looked like the fire. It looked like the chapel in flames. It looked like the pictures of his house they showed to him over and over again during their so called 'therapy'.

 

“ _Let me out,” Waylon said, his throat raspy, “let me out! I want to go home!”_

 

“ _You are home Waylon,” Andrew's syrupy voice, “right where you belong. In the loving, helpful hands of your doctors. Have you forgotten? You're crazy, killed your whole family by setting that fire.”_

 

“ _I didn't,” Waylon said, “I'd never do that!”_

 

_The lying bastards never stopped trying to get him to admit it, to think it was the truth. But he knew it wasn't, he knew, he remembered everything. Until he didn't._

 

It was as if Waylon had forgotten everything but the horror. Sitting in the jeep staring at the keys stuck in the ignition didn't do any good. He looked at it trembling and realized that there was something terribly, desperately wrong with him. Something more than he'd ever acknowledged before. The clock was broken, time wrote forwards and backwards in an impossible pattern. The shadow children, the pictures and all the memories flooded into him by the variants like so much cum had caused a few essential things to go missing. He knew as terrible as it was, he'd never entirely be himself again.

 

 _I can't drive this,_ Waylon thought, his breath coming out in a panicked series of gasps, _who the fuck drove this?_

 

There was a chill in the air, like the dead coming back to life.

 

“Hey,” the knock on the window was gentle, almost kind, “open up.”

 

Waylon shuddered uncontrollably, almost like he was in a palsy. He couldn't stop it.

 

“Open the door, darling,” it was Eddie, the shadow of the big man in the window come to life.

 

His only witness.

 

“Tell me,” Waylon swallowed, his throat hurt from screaming, “what was on the file.”

 

“If you really want to know,” Eddie said, “then open the door.”

 

“ _Wake up”, the voice had said, “you don't have to open your eyes but wake up.”_

 

It was swift as a slap, that terrible feeling. It was difficult but Waylon leaned over and unlocked the door. Eddie carefully opened it, like he was afraid of something. But Eddie wasn't afraid of much, not that Waylon could tell. Only the truth of himself.

 

“We have a lot in common,” Eddie said, beside Waylon in the passenger seat, “you and I.”

 

Eddie licked his lips, as though nervous. Such a patient, caring groom.

 

“He said it was best you remember on your own, not to push,” Eddie said, with some distaste, “even if I wanted to, so very very badly. Push right into your little head, find the place where my darling lived.”

 

Waylon blinked, slowly. This was going to be hard. It was bad, very bad.

 

“It was very complicated,” Eddie said, “I still don't understand a lot of the terms they used. I'm not a medical man, you see.”

 

Waylon panted, terror rising.

 

“What they did to you,” Eddie said, “was so cruel. Breathtaking, really. The things I saw when you reached out to me, they were shocking. And I've seen...well, I've seen real horrors in my time. But you already knew that.”

 

Eddie's face betrayed a moment of weakness, he blinked his own tears away.

 

“Worse still,” Eddie said, “I had this crazy fear that I'd always be second best. Who could compete with such a beautiful, loving _family_.”

 

The last word was said with such bitterness and distaste, Waylon felt himself squirm with indignation.

 

“Lisa-”Waylon rasped.

 

“Is dead,” Eddie said, “along with your two sons. So unfortunate, I would have made a great father to them. Not like the one I had, not like-”

 

Eddie trailed off, staring into the sunrise.

 

“Doesn't matter now, though,” Eddie said, “we've found each other haven't we? Two widowers...but can you pretend, just for me? That I was your first?”

 

Waylon blinked into the sun. This man was a killer (like him) had lost his family (like him) had been betrayed by people who were supposed to help (like him) but was also, an unequivocal monster (not like him at all, in the end). So, why did Waylon want to be near him so badly?

 

_Down into the basement Eddie had pursued Waylon, he had seen the Walrider kill poor Chris Walen and afterward watched as Waylon had his first, real breakdown. Glass shattering in the air and staying there, screaming that bent walls. Eddie had been terrified, then intrigued. The little woman was much more than she seemed, more even than the files insinuated. Too unstable to approach, Eddie had carefully and quietly followed Waylon around, watched Miles Upshur fuck himself up beyond all saving. Knew enough to rescue Waylon from himself at the last possible moment._

 

The Murkoff therapists had tried to pin the blame on Waylon but he had never believed their lies. Their efforts had certainly been effective at pile driving his own guilty conscience into his head though. That explained the attempted suicide. If he'd thought he was responsible, even a little...

 

The phone call in the gas station with Eddie had been to no where and nothing but empty air, number out of service, family burned to death. What he knew had come from Miles, the damn Walrider locked in his head that had recently been reborn from his flesh. What else could he give birth to?

 

What the hell did that make him?

 

What the hell was Eddie Gluskin in all of this?

 

He was...he had become...he had been....in that dark place with him...and saved him again and again...

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, “I remember now.”

 

Eddie's face brightened slightly, “do you?”

 

“I remember who you are,” Waylon said, thickly.

 

The tears that welled up were red, just like the freshly blown whites of Waylon's eyes.

 

_Subconjunctival hemorrhage._

 

_That's a pisser. Think he can still see?_

 

_I don't think he sees with his eyes anymore, if you get me._

 

_He sees just fine, don't be a moron. He's not like the other silent ones, the prophetic vegetables. This little techie has plenty of life in him yet. Hold him down, I'm going to inject some blood, see if we can push a little further this time._

 

It was severe enough that it would have kept Waylon from driving with the constant vertigo. Blood red dripped down the side of his face, taught with stitches carefully done. The last illusion he had built to survive had fallen away like so much ash carried away on the wind. Like swarms of locusts bursting from a lamprey mouth, opened wide and dark.

 

“We're family,” said Waylon.

 

The disgustingly wet kiss, the tongue on the side of his face. It felt good, it felt right. They had been married after all, united under a bower of love born from the worst kind of loss.

 

“I thought you might be nuts Waylon, but now I know it for sure,” Miles said, voice muffled outside of the jeep.

 

Eddie sighed frustratedly against Waylon's cheek.

 

“You always show up at the absolute worst times,” Eddie griped.

 

“Just look at him, what a mess,” Miles said, disgust in his voice, “those pieces of shit.”

 

Miles looked better, cleaned up. More like the man Waylon had seen in his memories, the smart ass journalist looking for his big scoop. He even had his fingers back.

 

“They died didn't they,” Waylon said, he already knew the answer but he wanted assurance.

 

Miles opened the jeep door and popped the trunk, “oh, yeah. Lisa called me up. She saw you before she- Jeremy Blair took her there, to your observation chamber. Wanted to scare her into staying quiet.”

 

Waylon shuddered, the memory of Lisa standing behind the glass burned into his eyes. It had happened, it had actually been real. It had been the last time he had seen her alive.

 

How depressing.

 

“That didn't work, she didn't scare easy,” Miles said, he was rifling in the back until he found a jacket and a gun, “when I met her she was looking for proof so she could hang Murkoff. I had your e-mail and that was compelling enough for me but when I started snooping around Leadville, I got a call from your wife. I was trying to help her get you back, find out what happened to you. I never really did get a sense of what she saw but whatever state you were in, she was totally convinced you'd be long dead by the time any law enforcement agency was ready to do anything about it. So I broke in to find you, or whatever was left.”

 

“Before or after?” Waylon said.

 

Miles paused, the silence stretching on for some time.

 

“She died the day before,” Miles said, “and I knew, even if it looked like it, I knew. That wasn't an accident. The kids they-”

 

Miles allowed Waylon a long shuddering, painful breath. He didn't want to think about his boys by their names, it was too painful. Too real. They'd be etched on their tombstones by now, anyway.

 

“ _Oh blessed mother, let me say a prayer for your pains.”_

 

_Father Martin had his moments, he was a crazy old man sure but under all the untamed madness, the fanatic religious delusions he had, the man had been a decent person. Murkoff scientists had tortured Father Martin, fucked him up with old memories and pain and agony until so little was left of him, it only held on by a thread. Waylon couldn't relate to his concept of god but he could relate to mercy, to kindness._

 

“ _They forgive you, blessed mother, no matter what you've done. It's what every child does.”_

 

“The kids had nothing to do with it, it was a screw up,” Miles said, “they paid everyone off they could. No one wanted to touch it, her family was devastated but they thought you were in there. That you died with her. Murkoff probably told you that at some point to fuck with you.”

 

The chapel in flames, the fire he wanted to die in. It all made so much sense.

 

“Try not to think too hard about it,” Eddie said, brushing a stray curl from Waylon's damp forehead, “or you might have another seizure.”

 

“He's gonna black out anyway,” Miles said.

 

“And how,” Eddie said, testily, “do you know that?”

 

“Cause I'm still kinda in his head,” Miles said.

 

“Then why don't you leave,” Eddie said, annoyed.

 

“Believe me, I'm trying,” Miles said, “it's not exactly nice in there, inside the mind of the insane. He's a bit fucked up.”

 

“Completely broken,” Eddie said, adoringly.

 

Waylon opened his eyes again. He was in the back seat, head laying on a warm lap. How had he gotten there?

 

“Don't worry,” Miles said, he was driving the jeep, “soon we'll be out of here. I had to get you fixed up hence all this stupid bullshit. I mean, you're shit right now but trust me, you were worse before. Dying almost.”

 

“Hardly possible for a near deity,” Eddie said reverently.

 

“I said almost,” Miles snapped, “it would have made things difficult. At least now we can just borrow blood from the hospital, before it had to be really fresh. Just a bit inconvenient, murdering poor bastards all the time.”

 

Eddie's laughter was soft and sinister, “don't worry darling, we'll be home soon and I'll be sure you're very well fed.”

 

“Oh, fuck you,” Miles said, “any god damn excuse for the reformed pervert.”

 

“If I didn't know better, I'd take one of those rifles and put a bullet right through your fucking skull,” Eddie said, with intense frigidity.

 

“He doesn't like being called names,” Waylon managed to rasp, “in case you weren't too sure.”

 

“Fantastic,” Miles said, “two against one. Talk about the odd couple...”

 

When they were clear of the bright sun a hazy dimness ensued and the snow that had paused earlier began to resume in gentle, falling flakes. It was achingly beautiful, the countryside covered in dark green trees that were at once comforting and sinister.

 

“You're not entirely Miles anymore,” Waylon said, softly.

 

“I'm sure as fuck not Billy Hope,” Miles said.

 

“What is the Walrider?” Waylon said.

 

“You should know,” Miles said, “whatever it is, it's in you too.”

 

“It doesn't feel like God,” Waylon said.

 

“Why not?” Miles said.

 

“There's no judgment,” Waylon said, “it's more like- something else.”

 

“All the old gods were made into demons anyway,” Miles said, “maybe it's just that. Something real old that was waiting for someone to notice it. Start worshiping again. Got to say, Murkoff put up one heck of a sacrificial spread for that thing.”

 

Blood sacrifice. Rituals. Whispers in the dark and the excrement and blood painted on the walls of cement prisons. The darkness inside the human soul, feral and strange.

 

“Where are you taking me?” Waylon said, a dread feeling returning, “Where the hell are we going?”

 

“Shh,” Eddie said, petting Waylon's hair, “calm down, I won't let anything happen to you.”

 

It was hardly comforting. Those two had struck _a deal_.

 

“To a house,” Miles said, effusive and mysterious, “a place we can set up. Hide out for a while.”

 

There was a purpose to it and Waylon knew damn well it wasn't entirely Miles in that body or entirely the Walrider either. And that's when the awful truth struck him; they were both something new beyond the sum of their parts. What the hell did that make the three of them?

 

There were trees and boroughs, winding roads that were long and barely populated by a few passing cars. Further and further into the woods they went until it was almost dark. That's when they came upon it, the house Miles had mentioned.

 

“That's a beauty,” Eddie said, “they don't make them like that anymore.”

 

It would have been a great setting for a horror film, huge and imposing. Dropped into the center of the yard like an elaborate gothic set piece, surrounded by thick evergreens.

 

“How old is that?” Waylon asked, rubbing his eyes.

 

They still itched, the wounds weren't exactly closing up. More like, healing around the stitches instead of scabbing over. They would probably be permanent; Waylon was beginning to understand that he probably would never look so human again as he had before Piquet and his torturers.

 

“At least 1920,” Eddie said.

 

“Yeah,” Miles said, “that's close to. It was an old hotel. Then an asylum. A big family owned it in the 30's but the old lady died and they sold it for a song. Land values crashed and I bought it real cheap in the 00's in case I needed a place to flop. Everything works but it's old as fuck, still has the original wiring so don't try to boil water and make toast at the same time or you'll flip the breaker.”

 

Eddie laughed a little, “that's fixable with some work. And those poor drooping gables, the steps are sinking too, right into the ground. Must have been a few hard winters here to do that.”

 

“It's my god damn house,” Miles said, “don't change anything.”

 

“For god's sake please let him,” Waylon said, “I can't plug in a computer with that kind of wiring, I'd just blow the motherboard.”

 

Eddie had a look of superiority on his face , “A lady's fancies ought to be considered, wouldn't you say?”

 

Miles stopped the car and went quiet.

 

“Fine,” Miles said, after a few still minutes, “you can do whatever you want. I just realized..I mean I wasn't thinking. Computers...are all you got right now.”

 

Waylon looked out the windows at the strange imposing structure. It did look a little like a miniature Mount Massive if he squinted.

 

Eddie said, blank and sinister, “A home, darling. Just like I promised.”

 

“Yeah,” Miles said, “that was the deal.”

 

They had gathered what little they had from the car then Miles went and popped the trunk.

 

“What the fuck is that,” Waylon said, before he could help himself.

 

Inside the trunk was a man, or rather what was left of him. It was almost more shocking when the wreck of a human being took in a rather shuddering, murmuring breath.

 

“Who the hell is he?” Eddie demanded, hackles instantly raised in the presence of another man.

 

“It's fine,” Miles said, “just think of him as the family pet.”

 

“It's Sharpy,” Waylon said, “you rescued him.”

 

“Is that his name?” Miles said, helping the man to his feet, “Not like I could ask. He just says the same thing over and over again.”

 

It must not have been comfortable being squashed in the trunk but with Eddie around, who was glaring murderously, it had probably been the only sane plan in hopes of getting him to the house.

 

Waylon said, deadpan, “what the fuck are you trying to do, Miles?”

 

“Nothing,” Miles said, “just keeping myself, and all of us including your charmer of a boyfriend, alive.”

 

“Husband,” Eddie testily corrected, “I don't like this at all.”

 

Whatever had happened to the man, Waylon wasn't keen on having a repeat. Like them all, he was a victim of Murkoff's cruelty. He felt irrationally attached to Sharpy's continued well being, for better or worse.

 

“He has nothing,” Waylon said, then clarified, “they cut it off. Everything below the waist. He can't get to me, he's just a radio with repeating static in the body of...something. Like a child.”

 

“He doesn't look like a child,” Eddie insisted, “doesn't look like what our children would look like.”

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, “he's the family pet, let him be. It would be like kicking a dog.”

 

“Well neither of us are looking after him,” Eddie said petulantly.

 

“I'm looking after him,” Miles snapped.

 

“Good for you,” Eddie bit back.

 

It must have convinced him somewhat to tolerate their new found guest, as there were no further comments. Waylon shakily made his way up to the enormous mansion and felt a strange sense of deja vu when he opened the door.

 

Rain soaked windows and the smell of old wood. Screams gone silent. The moans of the lost and lonely in the hallowed walls.

 

It smelled right, it felt like...

 

Like a home.

 

“Hold on,” Eddie said, surprising Waylon by grabbing him, “it's tradition.”

 

Picking him up bridal style, Eddie carried Waylon over the threshold.

 

“Here's to us, darling,” Eddie whispered in Waylon's ear.

 

It was everything, it was nothing. It was a horrific chill up his spine. This was real, it was happening. They were finally home, escaped, blown clear of Murkoff and all that they had done.

 

It was an almost a horrifying feeling, that freedom. Like being hurled from a mountain top without any wings.

 

“I'm scared,” Waylon confessed.

 

Waylon clung to Eddie, who was delighted.

 

“Nothing to be afraid of here, darling. Home Sweet Home,” Eddie said, with a faint, boyish giggle.

 

The furniture was old and covered in sheets, the smell in the air musty and damp. The area remote and far too dark even for rural tastes. There wasn't a single street light, the road to the house a gravel affair that wound perilously along ocean flanked cliffs. The inside was lit with dim, old bulbs that threatened to flicker and go out any second. The windows were enormous and the rain that poured down them in sheets only accentuated the overwhelming blackness looking outside the gloomy interior.

 

There were rooms, and beds. Old medical equipment like wheelchairs and disused gurneys in the basement. A near empty kitchen, so much space that had once been parlour or entryway or servant quarters and a special, brick oven in the basement that had probably been part of a crematorium but Waylon didn't want to go near it to find out and he certainly didn't want to see the steel walled morgue.

 

“My room is there,” Miles said, pointing to a large suite on the second floor, “everyone else can have what they want. And don't touch anything, don't go in there. I'm keeping our little buddy downstairs, I set up some stuff for him, so just leave him alone.”

 

This was mostly directed at Eddie, who was in architecture lust with the place and wanted to change everything into the perfect reproduction of an era gone by. Every room was full of plastic covered furniture and immaculate built in wooden features that made Eddie as excited as a little boy on Christmas.

 

“I can't wait to fix this molding,” Eddie rapturously declared during their survey of the house, “look at this. It hasn't been touched since 1880 at least. And the furniture is nearly perfect, only a few pieces are a bit too musty to consider. Everything else is just gorgeous, even the flax sheets. All it needs is some love and attention and a little airing out.”

 

“I wouldn't sleep in them they're over fifty years old,” Miles said, “I brought my sleeping bag.”

 

“How quaint,” Eddie said, clearly disgusted by him, “if you want to let your room rot into oblivion, that's your prerogative. But if anything effects the structure of the house, I'm going to fix it.”

 

“Fine,” Miles said, annoyed, “but you damn well better ask first.”

 

The room Eddie chose for them (because of course, it wasn't as though he'd let Waylon have a say about anything) was a collection of three rooms connected by a door into a 1940's era bathroom. It was big, relatively comfortable despite the old fashioned furniture and had big windows that overlooked the eerie wooded lot behind them. The furniture salvaged from the other floors consisted of an old fashioned thirties lounging set, big wood cabinets hauled from another unused room on the first floor into their living suite, a record player and sewing machine in one room, Waylon's work desk and bookshelf in another. The computer was carefully connected to the ancient plug with a series of extension cords. It was dicey, but Waylon was ready to take the risk.

 

“This place,” Eddie said, while hanging a picture of two creepy Victorian children in their bedroom, “is like a dream. None of that art nouveau crap from the twenties, just pure, unadulterated American living.”

 

Eddie was a prima donna about interior design and Waylon didn't give a shit; it worked out for the best.

 

“We're in Canada,” Waylon reminded him, “the east coast, to be precise.”

 

There wasn't any internet, not yet. But at least the computer worked and Waylon was busy building his own operating system out of the ashes of Murkoff's home brew. Glowing digital light against dark wood and towering windows, uncanny when the environment looked like it would have fit quite easily into Disney's haunted mansion.

 

“Regardless, we're not that far from Maine,” Eddie said, “it explains why everything is so period. Modernity didn't get here until the seventies, at least. No metropolitan city folk east of Montreal, according to the maps.”

 

There was even a library filled with hundreds of dusty, untouched tomes. Eddie loved books, especially old morality tales. He loved maps and the old toys they found in the attic, and the dark, awful gloom that came over Waylon whenever the grief became too much. It was alarming that sometimes Waylon would realize he had been standing at the kitchen sink or gazing out of a window for over an hour, lost in memory. In the dreams he had tried to forget. In something ineffably sad. In the longing for his family that was lost.

 

“I can't believe they're gone,” Waylon said, while looking into the rain soaked windows.

 

The dark shape looming behind him, the big man watching from the shadows came into focus against the green black glass.

 

“I know it hurts,” Eddie said, quietly, “I understand that, I really do.”

 

Eddie didn't understand anything but he didn't have to. His hand was around Waylon's throat in a flash, captured from behind.

 

“I just want to be the center of your attention,” Eddie said, his breath whispering against Waylon's ear, “I want to be the one you think about all the time.”

 

It hurt but it felt good. It was like a punishment, something deserved and longed for.

 

_Lisa, I fucked up. I'm so sorry._

 

Like an apology but also a consolation prize.

 

“I'm going to make you a beautiful dress,” Eddie whispered harshly into his ear, “red like your eyes. And you're going to love it and wear it in our beautiful living room with a record playing and I'm going to spin you around, just like an old fashioned girl.”

 

“I don't know how to dance,” Waylon rasped from the grip on his throat, so painful it nearly cut off his breath, “no one ever taught me.”

 

“I'll teach you,” Eddie said, dark and sinister, “how to be a good girl. My pretty, reformed whore.”

 

The bed was like an enormous wooden spider in the middle of the suite, a massive maple coloured creature to sink into, made of faded floral sheets and elaborate brocade covers. And Waylon spent most of his time in plaid shirts and plain jeans and a white t-shirt and looked about as much a part of the house as a traveler outside of time. But none of this stopped Eddie and it certainly didn't dampen his lust.

 

“I know what you are inside,” Eddie hissed into his ear one night, “who you _really_ are.”

 

“Who am I,” Waylon said, as Eddie's hands wrapped around his throat and squeezed with intent.

 

“My wife,” Eddie hissed, “my whore. Open up, darling,” Eddie said.

 

“I don't want this-” Waylon hesitated.

 

He was hit so hard his ears rang.

 

“A wife has duties,” Eddie snarled at him, “especially a wife like yourself, with such an ugly past. If you don't behave I'll have to force my way in.”

 

It was a wonderful threat, it blew all the ghosts away. All that agonizing mourning, breathtaking grief. The hurt made it better. The blood that pooled between Waylon's legs at the thought of his own rape was like a recognition of their mutual inhumanity. Eddie's monstrous cruelty, Waylon's twisted flesh.

 

“I'm going to take what's mine,” Eddie said, hauling Waylon around, “what I deserve from you.”

 

“Eddie,” Waylon said, head thrown back by the force of Eddie stripping him, “stop.”

 

“Not on your life,” Eddie said, laughing, “never again. I'm not letting you go, who knows where you'd run off to, this time with no walls keeping us in.”

 

Strangled near blacking out, his body fucked and used like a doll's. It was horrifying, it was good. It was all the things Waylon wanted.

 

“You fucking bitch,” Eddie hissed at him, “how dare you even think of anyone besides me.”

 

“You're the only one,” Waylon gasped, “please-”

 

Grabbing Eddie's back, scratching down his side. The little marks just seemed to work him up more, Eddie loved the struggle.

 

“I'm the only what,” Eddie grunted, pinning Waylon roughly to the bed, “the only what, you filthy slut!”

 

“The only one...who,” Waylon gasped the last breath in this throat, “the one who could save me.”

 

Eddie shuddered and came inside Waylon, thrust a few last desperate times. Waylon felt delirium, happiness, all the strange things he'd come to associate with their bizarre relationship. It was nothing like the beautiful one he had before.

 

 _Is this happiness too?_ Waylon thought, _I'm probably just crazy._

 

“I-,” Eddie stammered, post coital and gasping, “I lo-”

 

Again. He tried to say it again.

 

“I love you so much,” like a rasped confession, so quiet and filled with monstrous intent.

 

Waylon's breath came out in short gasps, he had almost been strangled. There would be a hand print to match the scars.

 

“You too,” Waylon said, quiet in the silence of the room.

 

It was the first time he had said it.

 

“W-what?” Eddie said, disbelieving a little what he had heard.

 

“I love you,” Waylon said, a little louder this time.

 

How beautiful silence was and how wet was Eddie's tongue against his cheek, into his mouth. The violent, rapist's kiss so welcome against the overwhelming loss.

 

_Wandering in the darkness in a white smock spattered in blood, Waylon crawled into the air vent shaking, trembling like a leaf. Down below he saw a man throw in the rotten head of a corpse. He saw him, huge and strong like a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Waylon was starving, he was so hungry. Here was safety, here was rescue. Something huge to feed from but he hadn't known...how could he? It was always there in the blood dream, their special connection. The lost boy, the lonely bride. They understood each other, didn't they?_

 

“ _Darling!” the big man in the window of a doorway, maddened by the mountain._

 

_Waylon fled, he was caught. He fled again. Finally in the attic he met the person his sickness longed for, the right man to beat him, make sure he knew his place, that he would never be forgiven for his past transgressions. Oh, how he deserved all that pain._

 

_How he deserved insemination, birth, longing for a family that had disappeared. Punishment for the monster he'd become._

 

The shadow people flickered in the room, but they didn't look like shadows anymore. They were real. They were still alive. In the blood dream they walked like specters and darkness, memory and reality. Physical but not. They had names, they had realities they had lived. Nightmares and dreamscapes that fell from minds that were twisted beyond repair, they had been lied to by everyone. Death was no escape. The twin poets, the cannibal, the priest and dismal doctor were all still there and Waylon knew them so well, he loved them. They still spoke aloud in their own voices, in his blood dream whispering truth from their gaping wide mouths. And part of Waylon was still with them, his lonely boys trapped in Mount Massive Asylum.

 

Still wandering in the dark.

 

 


End file.
